The Blossoming of the Bud
by RomanDeLaRose
Summary: What if Dickens got Rosa Bud quite wrong, and her feelings towards Mr Jasper were much more complex than at first they appeared? Here is how the story could have been. John Jasper/Rosa Bud, will veer into AU territory later on and SUITABLE FOR ADULTS ONLY
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The summer had been long and tedious and I was pleased to think that soon Edwin would be going back to Cambridge to complete his engineering studies.

Our days were always the same. I would read in the garden or sew in the parlour, then, after lunch with Miss Twinkleton, Edwin would call. We would take a turn about the Cathedral Close, perhaps sit by the great oak doors and hear the choir rehearse, perhaps accept Mrs Crisparkle's offer to stand us afternoon tea.

He would try to tease me and I would tire of it. We would carp at each other until the time came for me to go back into the Nun's House and practise at the piano.

This was what life held for me. Silly quarrels with Edwin – except in the future they would take place in much hotter climes, and I would have to…have to…

I did not want to marry. But what choice did I have?

I welcomed the passing of August, its parched air mellowing into golden September. A time when the Nuns' House would revive from its long, overheated swoon, the corners echoing again with laughter and singing. A time when Edwin would be gone and I could play at being free, having no obligations, no testamentary duties.

First, however, there was the odious necessity of taking supper with his uncle.

Edwin doted on his 'Uncle Jack' but I knew him only as the cathedral choirmaster, a figure whose back I saw at regular intervals when attending Sunday services and Choral Evensong, but no more than that. Edwin had painted him to me as the male equivalent of a mother hen, a fussing, fretting creature who made him eat sensibly and drink moderately and go to bed at a respectable hour when he was down in Cloisterham.

My expectations of this supper, then, were low as Miss Twinkleton and I made our way on a balmy late summer evening to his gatehouse lodge. There would be yet more dull talk of Egypt and engineers, with additional references to choristers. How dry it promised to be.

Edwin met us at the little door set into the archway. He was wearing his good blue suit and an air of barely-concealed excitement.

"What has put such colour in your cheeks, Eddy?" I asked when he took my hand to lead me up the stair.

"It is a great moment in a man's life," he said, "when he can show off his promised bride to those people whose opinion he values the most."

"That person," I said, correcting him, for Edwin had no family to speak of now, both parents being dead with no surviving brothers or sisters.

"Yes, that person," he allowed.

"I am not a waxwork, like one of Madam Tussaud's creations, to be poked and prodded and gawped at."

"I did not say you were, Pussy! Ah, here we are."

For we had reached the top of the staircase.

"Be sweet," he whispered to me, pushing open the door.

Mr Jasper's back was to us as we stepped into the room. He was pouring wine into glasses over by a large credenza. As soon as the door was shut, he turned to greet us.

"Miss Bud," he said.

I put out my hand and he did something no man had done to me before – he put my fingertips to his lips and kissed them, quite as if I were a grown lady. It was at once flattering and unsettling, and I hardly knew how to respond.

What did the grown ladies in the romances do?

"Mr…Jasper," I said, trying to recollect myself. "How do you do?"

"Very well," he said, his eyes upon me all the while as if the room were empty of all others. "Your presence here tonight honours me."

I tried to think of something modest and gracious to say, but I could not. Instead I watched dumbly as he made polite remarks to Mrs Twinkleton, and Edwin handed us the wine glasses.

He was good enough to play for us while we sipped at our drinks – somewhat stronger than I was accustomed to. He filled the room with wonderful melody, first some Haydn then Chopin, who was my favourite.

"Oh, Chopin!" I could not help exclaiming when he struck the first notes of a particularly precious nocturne. He smiled over the piano, then, when the piece was finished, asked me about my musical tastes and interests.

I had never been able to speak of this with anyone before. Edwin is such a philistine, and the Nuns' House girls only like music to dance to, so I suppose I made quite an ass of myself, rhapsodising on while Miss Twinkleton and Edwin exchanged comical glances.

"Your tastes tend to the Romantic," remarked Jasper as we were seated for dinner, which made Edwin snort.

"I wouldn't vouch for that," he said. "All my efforts to be romantic meet with the sternest rebuff from our Pussy."

"Don't be so embarrassing, Eddy," I hissed. "Or I won't speak to you for the rest of dinner."

"Now, now, Rosa," quacked Miss Twinkleton. "Let us remember our manners in our host's house."

"On the subject of music," said Jasper, skating over the awkwardness with efficient smoothness, "Edwin suggests that you might be ready for more advanced lessons than those you have been taking…with Miss Critchell? Is it?"

"Yes. Miss Critchell." She came to the Nuns' House three times a week to hear us play, but everyone knew she was as deaf as a post. Everyone except her, it seemed.

"Does she suit you? Or would you agree with Edwin that your abilities may benefit from a higher level of tuition now?"

"Eddy knows nothing about music," I said, casting him a daggers glance, not pleased that he had been discussing me with his uncle. "He would play a drum out of tune."

"Pussy!" remonstrated Eddy, yet Jasper refused to be diverted, leaning towards me as he awaited my answer.

"I'm not offering my services to Edwin," he persisted softly. "I'm offering them to you."

"_You_ are? You offer your services?"

"As music master, I do."

"I'm not terribly good," I said with a slight stammer, rather taken aback at the notion that I should be worthy of lessons from Cloisterham's foremost musician. "You will probably find me rather hopeless. I try to make my fingers do as they should, but they are so provokingly difficult to control…"

"Well, that's easily remedied," he said with a smile that made something within me constrict. "I am particularly skilled with errant fingers."

"I…I'm sure you are."

"Pussy practises an awful lot," contributed Edwin. "Religiously, I'd say."

I refrained from saying that piano rehearsal was simply my excuse to cut short our afternoon expeditions.

"Then that's settled. What do you say, Miss Twinkleton? Twice a week, voice and piano? Can I count on your putting your music room at my disposal?"

Miss Twinkleton fluttered and squawked and heaved her bosom until arrangements were in place – Mondays and Thursdays, after lunch, for an hour.

This should have been cause for mild celebration, but I felt oppressed by the knowledge that I would be spending two hours a week closeted with this man of sombre mien.

Even when the conversation turned to the perennial insomnia-fodder of Egypt and Edwin's prospects, Jasper cast a shadow over the table somehow. He made me think of the silly ghost stories the girls sometimes told each other late at night in the dormitory – about _blighted souls_ and that kind of thing.

I would catch him at odd moments, looking at me.

_Why are you looking at me like that? Look away._

There was something provocative and overly intimate in his scrutiny that caused the soft hairs to prickle on the nape of my neck. With determination, I avoided his gaze for the rest of the dinner, our eyes meeting only at the moment of parting.

Edwin walked us back to the Nuns' House, eager to know my impressions of Uncle Jack.

"He is a man," I replied, and I would yield no further opinion, simply reiterating this phrase until he was quite mad with frustration.

"Yes, _he_ is a man, Miss Pert, and you are a minx! I don't envy you, Miss Twinkleton, the task of transforming our Pussy into a young lady fit for society, truly I don't."

"I don't need to be fit for society, just the 'gyptians," I retorted, blowing him an ironical kiss before we retired into our domicile.

Edwin left the next day to spend some weeks with friends in London before returning to Cambridge. Our parting was on reasonably amicable terms, with fewer skirmishes than usual. All the same, when he left, I was suddenly aware of a lift in my heart and my spirits – in my very ribcage – which eased my breath.

"Do you not miss him terribly?" asked Edith, as we walked together in the garden on the first day of lessons.

"Not really."

"But…" She gaped at me, a goldfish opening and shutting her mouth. "He is so awfully dashing. All the girls are quite in love with him."

"All the girls are silly featherbrains, then. When you've grown up with a fellow, you don't notice these things. Even if he is your affianced husband. I suppose the day will come when I regard him differently."

I paused, plucking a petal from a late-blooming rhododendron.

"I suppose," I repeated, frowning.

It perturbed me, when I dared to think about it, that my heart had fallen prey to none of those delicious stirrings described in the romance novels. Edwin was a brother to me, a person I cared for and would do most anything to protect but…a lover?

I had never felt more than aesthetic appreciation for any man or boy. When the nuns' girls (as we were known) let their eyes rove around cathedral services in search of a fine figure, I could not participate in the giggles. However fine a figure a man had, he could not be more to me than an acquaintance, a passer-by.

My life was meant for Edwin. I was bound to him, and such love as I was capable of giving was intended for him.

When he was away, I could almost love him, I think. His memory, the golden boy with the bright smile, was vivid and charming, yet I was growing more and more used to disappointment with each reunion.

No matter, I thought. My final year at the Nuns' House would pass and all this would end and whatever was meant to happen would happen.

My first music lesson with Mr Jasper took place on that same day I had confided in Edith. After lunch, Miss Tisher came to find me in the dining room, all breathless and a-flutter at having admitted a man into the house.

She went with me to the music room and retired, leaving the door open in lieu of a chaperone, which the scarcity of teachers didn't allow. I think there was some kind of arrangement that sent one of the maids scuttling past at ten minute intervals.

Mr Jasper was seated already at the piano, his head bent over the keys while he assessed the instrument's tuning.

He looked up when I entered the room and smiled that strange smile he had, that seemed to have so many secrets behind it.

"Miss Bud," he said, rising politely and bowing his head before taking his place on the stool once more. "I would like to hear you sing. Come and stand beside me."

A commonplace enough request, so why did it sound like an invitation of the most perilous nature? I dawdled to the piano, on top of which an array of sheet music lay in a fan shape.

"Do you know any of these?" asked Jasper.

"This. Miss Critchell always made me sing it." I picked up _My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair _and proffered it with little enthusiasm.

"But you don't like it?"

"I like it well enough."

He smirked, shaking his head a little at that. "'Well enough' will have to suffice. Now, let us see what we make of it."

He took to the keyboard and played the familiar introduction. I sang the song through, without faltering, though my breath, as ever, rarely lasted long enough to get me to the end of each line. Jasper was a considerably better pianist than Miss Critchell, and his failure to stop for a moment before the more difficult chords confused me at first.

I ended the song and looked away, fearing that his verdict might be harsh.

"There is work to be done, it is clear," he said, and I blushed flame-red. That certainly wasn't the courtly compliment I was used to when I sang at the Crisparkles' Alternate Musical Wednesdays. Although I had expected it, the criticism stung. "But that is what I am here for. I fear you have fallen into bad habits with your Miss Critchell. Did she let you stand like that, all hunched over?"

I had forgotten my posture, but this was more due to my anxious dread of Jasper than anything Miss Critchell had done.

"No, indeed, I…I am a little nervous, that is all."

"Of me?"

I neither replied nor looked at him, but shrugged.

"No, Miss Bud, look at me and answer. Are you nervous of me?"

I dragged my gaze unwillingly to his, shrinking beneath his severe brow.

"A little," I admitted, mutinously.

He smiled and the shadows lifted, just for that moment.

"Well, that will never do," he said in a placatory tone. "Shall we make a solemn covenant here and now, Miss Bud? That you will accept that whatever I say to you is in your best interests and intended solely to assist your improvement?"

"Is it?" I was still in a minor sulk.

"Miss Bud, I won't be spoken to as you speak to Edwin, let us be clear on that from the outset. Banish all petulance from your manner and we will get along famously, I am sure. Now, stand straight, put your shoulders back and let's try some scales."

He worked me much harder than Miss Critchell ever had, and I rued the day Edwin had ever asked for this favour. I wanted to sing some gay airs for the drawing room, but Jasper permitted nothing but scales and breathing exercises, right until the very last minute of the allotted time.

"Your breathing is a matter of some concern," he said, his hands lifting from the piano at last. "I can't imagine how any of you young ladies breathe at all, laced up so tightly."

_Laced up so tightly_. He almost whispered the words, his eyes fixed on my waist. The atmosphere had become charged again, just the way it was at that supper party.

"Like the bodice blue. In the song," I said, scarcely knowing what words fell from my lips. I felt the need for a diversion, and my mention of the song seemed to provide it.

"Yes, yes, the bodice blue," he said, snatching up the score again. "Let's sing this again and see what improvement has been made."

This time he approved of my posture and I tried my hardest to control my breath, though I'm sure my efforts weren't up to his high standards.

"Better," he said. "Still not perfect, but Rome wasn't built in a day. A little more expression next time. Perhaps if we changed 'Lubin' to 'Edwin'…"

His sidelong glance was sly. He wanted to gauge my reaction to that thought.

_Alas, I scarce can go or creep now Edwin is away._

No. The names could not be changed. I could both go and creep with impunity, and I had the piercing sensation that Jasper understood this, that he saw behind my outward appearance and read my heart.

The arrival of Miss Tisher at the door covered my confusion and it was a great relief to me to see the back of Mr Jasper, even if it was only for a few days before the piano class.

My mind was much occupied with the singing lesson for the rest of that day. I tried to unravel the events, to understand what Mr Jasper's curious manner might mean. Of course, he was simply doing Edwin a favour. Because Edwin wanted an accomplished wife who could entertain his colleagues at supper parties. There was no more to it than that – how could there be?

All the same, I wished some of the other girls might be his pupils, then we could compare notes on him. But they knew him only from a distance, as the choirmaster at cathedral services.

The piano lesson was even worse. He found fault with my technique, with my fingering, with my pedal effects, with my accuracy, with my expression, with everything! I spent the entire hour fighting off fit after fit of pique, replaying the same horrid, tedious exercises over and over while he sat beside me shaking his head and holding up his hand to stop me again, the metronome ticking like a tyrant.

And he was too close to me. Occasionally, when my left hand strayed down towards the end of the keyboard, I had to almost lean against him, and feel the fabric of his tailcoat brush my sleeve. Our knees were no more than an inch apart. A curious heat prickled at my skin and I was uncomfortably conscious of his…what could I call it? His masculinity. That was it. Yet nothing of this nature or magnitude had ever disturbed me with Eddy, even when we embraced.

It was utterly unwelcome and not to be borne.

"I have resolved to cancel my music lessons," I declared to Edith, flinging myself on to the bed beside her.

"Rosy! You cannot! What would dear Edwin think?"

"Dear Edwin can go hang! No, I don't mean that," I said, feeling a pang of guilt at Edith's horror. "But he can tell his Uncle Jack to do so. Awful, horrid man."

"Is he a very hard taskmaster?"

"He is like granite. So critical and sniping and mean and gloomy. I hereby banish him from my days." I waved my hand so widely that I upset her comb and brush, knocking them off the nightstand.

"Oh dear, but Kitty Mason thinks that Miss Twinkleton admires him very ardently. She saw her stroking his inner hatband when she thought nobody could see. She will never consent to ending his visits."

"Ugh, Edith, do you mean to ruin my appetite? Miss Twinkleton and Jasper? Perhaps we should make a match."

Our conversation descended into giggles and my immediate resolve to end the lessons was forgotten for the moment.

That night, we sat up late, telling ghostly tales again by the light of a single candle, the craze that had swept the school before the summer having not abated a jot in the intervening months.

Kitty Mason had a great talent for chilling the bones, and it was she who extemporised before a small but enthralled audience.

"In the cathedral crypt," said she, "there is a vault, and this vault belongs to the Droods."

Everyone turned to me, their faces raptly aghast.

"It is true," I said carelessly. "Eddy once showed it to me."

"Each Christmas Eve," she continued, "as the good folk of Cloisterham hang up their stockings and prepare for the feast to come, down in the Drood vault, there is a ghostly shriek and a clanking of bones. As the hour comes close to midnight, the great barred gates creak open and footsteps make their way across the stone floor."

"Whose are the footsteps?" begged Edith, sucking on her thumb the way she used to when she came here as a very little girl.

"Nobody knows. But Mr Durdles the stonemason thinks that they belong to Captain Drood, who would be your father-in-law, Rosy, if he were still alive. He climbs the stair to the choir, so slowly, and he takes his place for midnight mass."

"Stuff and nonsense!" I hooted. "A ghost in the choir."

"Yes, and his brother-in-law Mr Jasper knows all about it."

"Who has been speaking with you about Mr Jasper?" I gave Edith a furious look.

"Only the spirits," said Kitty mysteriously, then she grinned. "The spirits and everyone else. Everyone knows Miss Twinkleton finds him sooo very fascinating. Don't you think it's the most exquisite joke?"

"Not really," I said, tight-lipped. "I think it's extremely stupid. And I'm going to sleep. Goodnight."

I slept uneasily. In my dreams, I found myself in the cathedral crypt, in a darkness that pressed against me at all sides. Mysterious echoing sounds filled my ears and I crept along, sobbing and terrified, unable to find the foot of the staircase that led out of this fearful place. I knew I would be entombed here, walled up and buried alive, if I couldn't reach that staircase soon, but it had gone and only solid wall met my exploring palms.

I tried to scream for help, but my voice was gone, and then arms enfolded me, strong and protective, and I prayed that this might be a saviour.

But he spoke, "Miss Bud," and my fear grew into panic.

"No, no, leave me, no."

"You are a woman now."

"Never, never, never will I be, never, never."

I was still gasping "never" when I woke up.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you to all who are reading and reviewing - the tension builds...

**Chapter Two**

_1st October 1845_

_Dear Puss_

_I hope this finds you well._

_We are having some fine autumn weather here in Cambridge. I hope your weather is also fine._

_Studies going well etc. and I have all my papers ready for Egypt next year. Have had some excellent rugger this season._

_Uncle Jack writes to say that you are making good progress with your music studies. How is the old fellow as a music master? Better than your Miss Critchell, I hope._

_I must end here, as the fellows want to take a rugby ball down to the playing field while the sun is out._

_Affectionately your _

_Edwin._

"Eddy is the worst correspondent in the world."

I threw the letter on the breakfast table, to the consternation of the other girls present.

"Surely not!" Miss Twinkleton shook her head and paused in the spreading of marmalade. "He is an excellent young gentleman and he dotes on you."

"If he dotes on me, why does it take him three weeks to write and then, when he does, it's a few scrawled lines about rugby?"

"Ah, we are not all naturally gifted with a pen, my dear. Young Mr Drood has plentiful talents in other directions, which will keep you well provided for."

Well provided for, in a place I did not want to live. The ungracious words stayed in my thoughts only. I snatched the letter back up and made to leave the room.

"Do not forget, Rosa," Miss Twinkleton admonished my escaping form, "you have your voice lesson after lunch. If you are late again, Mr Jasper will be most displeased."

"Oh." I stopped dead and half-turned, putting a hand to my forehead as if to assess its heat. "Miss Twinkleton, my throat is awfully sore this morning. I fear I may have to postpone today's lesson."

"Sore throat? Well, why in heaven's name didn't you mention it earlier? And you seemed in fine voice just now, when you were so quick to criticise young Mr Drood."

I affected a pathetic little cough.

"I don't like to complain."

I could see my friends rolling their eyes at each other. They knew well enough that this was a ploy to avoid my music lesson.

"Well, we shall see how you feel later, when Mr Jasper calls."

"I can barely speak. Could you not send word to him that I am indisposed?"

"Later," said Miss Twinkleton, uncharacteristically firm. A plague on her and her silly infatuation. She would not admit of anything that might take her twice-weekly flutter away from her.

It seemed I had to resign myself to another hour of singing 'Ah' in various permutations, over and over again, while he…looked at me.

I had never been more conscious of my body than I was during these purgatorial sessions. He fixed his eyes on my throat, my chest, my mouth, my waist and kept them there, lips half-parted, his expression drifting off into a near-daze at times, until he seemed to recollect himself and tap on the piano top before making some nasty criticism or other.

I experienced his attention as a pressure, like whalebone, tight around me. I tried so hard to hide from it, to deflect it, but it pinned me down and held me so that my dreams at night were of imprisonment and constraint.

"Have you heard from Ned?" he said that day, opening his case and removing a pile of scores that probably wouldn't be used.

"Ned? I've heard from _Eddy_," I said with emphatic hostility.

Too emphatic; he looked up from his papers and raised his eyebrows at me.

"Is he well?"

"Very well. Playing lots of _rugger_."

Jasper smiled in this maddening way he had, of seeming to find something beyond my immediate words amusing. It was almost indulgent, proprietorial. It made me cross. How dared he feel proprietorial towards me? I did not in any way belong to him.

I didn't smile back and he turned to the piano.

"Well, shall we see if those high notes will elude us today?"

Another hour passed of this intense doppelgänger of reality, where it felt we were both denying what was actually happening. What would an observer see, I wondered? A music lesson, simply? Or something more?

The very air thickened as I squeezed out the notes to the wavering last, never able to give him what he sought.

"No," he said, putting down the piano lid and coming to stand alarmingly close. "Breathe in. One good deep breath."

I started to inhale and he put a hand on my shoulder, steadying it. I looked at him wildly, and then at the door, but the maid was nowhere in evidence.

"You don't need to lift your shoulders to take a breath," he said in explanation, removing his hand. "Now try again."

Holding my shoulders down, I filled my lungs afresh.

"Put a finger to your lips," he said, his voice so low. "Breathe out as slowly as you can. If you let too much go at once, you will feel it on this finger. Control it. That's it. Slower, as slowly as you can. Put your hand here."

He put his hand on his stomach. Surely he did not mean for me…? My breath began to jolt.

"No, not mine – yours!" he said, reading my thoughts.

I put my palm flat against my corseted stomach and felt it relax, as far as it could behind those rods of bone.

"Good. Now try it again."

We stood there like that, close as lovers yet far distant, while he watched me breathe.

"I want you to practise this," he said. "Whenever you have an idle moment. Take a breath and release it, and repeat until you have absolute mastery of it. Will you do that for me?"

"I will do it. I will try."

His hand twitched, as if he meant to reach out to me, to touch my face, then it fell back by his side.

The maid's head appeared around the door.

"The hour's up, Miss Twinkleton says."

"Remember me to Ned," Jasper said, packing his case, the thread of tension between us broken again. If it had existed. Had it?

I excused myself and ran upstairs to the dormitory. Now I needed to breathe, big gasps of air, putting my neck back and shutting my eyes until my lungs fell back into the natural pattern and I could be calm.

I picked up my notepad and pen and wrote to Eddy.

_Dearest Eddy_

_I was so happy to hear from you, but I do wish you would say more. Other girls get billets doux and I get a lot of flannel about rugby. It isn't fair!_

_Your Uncle Jack has just been for our voice lesson. There never was such a music master."_

I paused, fidgeting with my pen, aching to say something about the strangeness of everything between me and Jasper. But what could I say, without implying that his beloved Uncle Jack plotted to betray him? I had no evidence of any such thing. It could be no more than my imagination, though with each lesson I became more convinced that this was not the case.

But he had made no declaration, nor anything akin to one. Was I going mad?

I pictured a court of law in the case of Drood vs Jasper. What solid proof could the plaintiff produce? None. The defendant was innocent of the charge. Surely. Surely he was. No jury could convict him.

In my bed that night I lay listening to Edith and Kitty and the others snuffling and sighing. I envied them their innocent dreams. All I could think of was Jasper's eyes on me, and how they corrupted me. He made me think of my flesh. How did he do this? Sleep was distant and I was restless. What would happen if I lifted my nightdress to my waist and put my hand upon that place…that place…womanhood?

I put the nightdress down, panting slightly. _Eddy, think of Eddy, think of…of…flowers. Wholesome things, sweet things_.

I clenched my fists by my sides and looked straight up, at the dark ceiling, trying my hardest to forget Jasper had ever looked at me with his corrupting eyes.

But he followed me into my dreams, winding himself around me, insinuating himself under my skin. There was no escape from him, even in sleep.

At the piano, he demonstrated fingering techniques so that our hands sometimes crossed over on the keyboard, our forearms glancing together then apart. Once, he lost patience with my fumbling and seized my hand, positioning the fingers as he required. He noticed how I started back, almost off the stool, but he held them firm.

"What are you afraid of?" he said, with a self-conscious little smile. He knew it was him I feared, he knew it. "Look. Little delicate fingers like yours barely span the octave, but if you place them so, you can stretch to it."

"I…can't."

He released them. He must have noticed how they trembled, but he didn't remark upon it.

"If you neglect your practice, as I sense you have been doing, then, no, you can't. I shall speak to Miss Twinkleton and ask her to add a rehearsal hour to your daily timetable."

"Oh, _must_ you?"

"Yes. Try it again. You need merely to build some strength in your fingers. Nobody is born a pianist, even Mr Liszt."

My reply was a glower.

"Perhaps instead I should add an extra lesson to the week. Saturday mornings…"

"I will practise, I promise I will! There is no need to speak to Miss Twinkleton, though."

"Good. Then we shall soon find that we are able to move on from these exercises you find so uncongenial."

"I cannot tell you how ardently I look forward to that day. If ever I have occasion to be introduced to Mr Carl Czerny, I am sure I shall cut him dead."

Jasper laughed. Our hands lay side by side on the keys. He had such long fingers; it was easy enough for him to span an octave. They were gentleman's hands, pale and unblemished, but with such strength in them that I barely dared imagine how tightly they could grip, around my wrist, around my waist. And yet imagine it I did. Why did my mind play such horrid games with me?

The girls chattered constantly about what it would be like to be married, but I seldom joined in their highly-coloured imaginings. I did not want to think about it.

I wanted to bring time up short, then to reverse it, back through the years until I was the smaller Rosa, flat of chest and without that disgusting hair, able to wear a bodice instead of a corset. And then I wanted to go further back, back to the time before my parents died and to stop their deaths, so that my future might be different. No Nuns' House, no Edwin, no Jasper.

Oh, why could it not be so?

One darkening afternoon in late October I walked with Edith and Kitty towards the High Street, the dead leaves skittering around our skirts in the playful wind.

"If you did not marry Edwin," opened Kitty, to my considerable irritation, "do you think both your fathers would come to haunt you?"

"Kitty, don't be such a beast," remonstrated Edith. "You can be heartless sometimes."

"Captain Drood would have a long journey to make for the haunting," I observed flatly. "For his bones rest in Egypt."

"Truly?" Kitty was fascinated. "I thought he lay in the Drood vault."

"No. Eddy says his body was never recovered from the mining accident."

"How ghastly!" exclaimed Edith.

"Could we take a different route?" I asked, eyeing Mr Jasper's gatehouse nervously. "I do not like to pass under that archway."

"Kitty has filled your head so full of her ghostly imaginings?" An annoyingly sympathetic Edith took my arm and hugged me close to her. "Poor Rosy-Posy. You must take no note of her."

But there the conversation ended, for Kitty had halted and was pointing her arm wildly at the gatehouse arch.

"O, a vision!" she intoned.

Following her line of sight, my heart sank when the beaming face of Edwin turned towards us and he commenced waving vigorously.

"Hie! Pusskins!" he bellowed.

I cringed, hating his stupid pet name for me even more than usual.

"What on earth are you doing here?" I hissed once he had run over to us.

"I got an Exeat. Don't look so flabbergasted, Puss! Anyone would think you had seen Spring-Heeled Jack instead of your own dear Eddy."

"We will go to the High Street by ourselves," said Edith helpfully, though Kitty seemed none too pleased by this tactful withdrawal, looking back at us several times before disappearing through the arch.

"You fwightened me," I said, reverting to the lisping prattle I affected in his company.

He laughed fondly, drawing my stiff body into an embrace.

"Poor Pusskins. Cheer up and I'll buy you some jujubes. Come to the sweetshop."

It transpired that it was Jasper's birthday and Edwin had come to celebrate it with him.

"I hope you're attending to your music studies, Puss," said Edwin on our return from the sweetshop. Miraculously, we had not quarrelled yet – perhaps an effect of our dedication to sucking the jujubes instead of talking. "Or Uncle Jack will hold me to account for it."

"Why would he? You aren't the one he terrorises with his eternal finger exercises."

"No, but you are my promised bride, so the ultimate responsibility for you falls to me."

"How stupid. You are all so stupid. I will do as I please, and bear the blame for it myself."

I tossed my head and kicked a pebble out of the archway, beneath which we now stood.

"That is not how society functions, Rosa, and you know it."

"Oh, you are scolding me! You only ever call me Rosa when you are scolding me. It isn't fair, Eddy, truly it isn't. You are mean and cruel and I hope you are kinder to me when Christmas comes." I stamped my foot, deriving a sharp and vicious satisfaction from the echo my heel made.

Edwin stepped back from me, his arms flung wide in surrender.

"There is no use in talking with you when you are in this humour. I shall go and call on Mrs Crisparkle – she at least may have a good word for me. If your temper improves later, I shall come and call on you at the Nuns' House."

"Do not trouble yourself on my account!" I called after him as he strode off towards the Cathedral Close.

I huffed and folded my arms, trying to collect myself before returning home, but when my eyes slid sideways, they alighted on the mortifying sight of John Jasper, standing in his little doorway, watching me. How much of that scene had he observed?

I did not stay to find out, taking to my heels and running from him as fast as my feet would carry me.

At our next lesson, I blushed as soon as I entered the room, dreading that he might bring up the subject of my silly row with Eddy.

I went to stand by the piano, composing myself for yet more breathing and singing of arpeggios.

"Edwin returned to Cambridge much subdued," he said.

I rolled my eyes and held my tongue. I did not want to speak of this.

"But I was able to reassure him that you were by no means the first lovers to quarrel, and that anger and passion are closely bound."

I turned and stared at him. _Anger and passion are closely bound_. He made reference to my…passions. How did he dare?

"I don't wish to speak of it."

He held my eyes boldly but I maintained an icy glare that eventually fended him off.

"The Miss Bud I saw with him is not the Miss Bud I have come to know," he said.

I flushed to the roots of my hair, infinitely mortified.

"Please, if you are a gentleman, do not speak of it."

"I wonder which is the real Miss Bud," he mused softly, as if to himself. "Shall we ever know?" He reached into his case. "Let's try this song, shall we? _Who is Silvia, what is she, that all our swains adore her?_"

I was in a worse confusion than ever once he left the house.

He made claim to know me better than Eddy did. Was he accurate in his surmise? Did I deceive Eddy and show my true self to Jasper? And, if so, why was this?

And if he 'knew' me, as he said, who was the Rosa Bud he knew? How did she differ from Eddy's promised bride?

He was under my skin, in my head, stealing my deepest thoughts and using them against me. I felt so acutely endangered that, before the next piano lesson, I cornered Kitty Mason in the dormitory and held out my hand to her.

"Kitty, twist my wrist. Twist it right round."

She frowned, as if she had not understood my words.

"I need at least a sprain. Come on. I will pay you."

"Rosy, what is this?"

"You are always giving girls Chinese burns – you are the school expert. Twist it round. I don't want a piano lesson today."

"You really do detest that Mr Jasper, don't you?" Her eyes were saucers.

"Yes. So? Will you do it? Please?"

She sighed. "I am not sure I can. Let me try."

She wrenched my wrist in a sudden, sharp contortion that made me cry out.

"Oh, oh," I gasped, tears coming to my eyes. "I think that has done it. Oh, it does hurt so. Kitty, you are a marvel. You shall have all my cake this week."

Ten minutes later, when Jasper arrived in the hallway, my wrist was bandaged and resting in a sling made of a pillowslip.

He regarded it with dismay as I made a pained descent of the staircase.

"I am such a clumsy goose," I explained to his and Miss Twinkleton's horrified faces. "I'm afraid I shall not be able to play for at least a week."

Jasper's eyes narrowed, sending a quiver through me. He was furious, it was plain.

"I am so sorry that you have been put out," gushed Twinkleton, putting a hand on his arm.

He stepped back, returning his hat to his head and seizing his scarf from the coathooks.

"There is nothing to be done," he growled, then he swept fiercely from the house.

Later that day, when Kitty and I took a walk around the Close, we saw a light shining golden from his gatehouse window. Kitty drew me closer, against my will, until we could hear music. He was playing his piano.

"Goodness, what _Sturm und Drang_!" said Kitty admiringly.

The last movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata crashed about our ears, as stormy and intense as I had ever heard it.

"You have made him awfully angry," she added unnecessarily. "My goodness, he makes one _shiver_, doesn't he?"

She turned to me, her face bright with ghoulish delight. "I wonder if he would give _me_ lessons. I think him rather handsome."

"Don't be a goose. Come on, it's cold. Let's go home."

But it wasn't just the cold that made me want to hug myself tight and hide by the fire. Oh no.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Kitty Mason said it was God's judgement on me when I fell prey to a high fever and sore throat the very next day.

"God takes it in bad part when you abuse your own flesh, you know," she said, wagging her finger at me as I lay coughing feebly in the dormitory. "He makes you suffer for it. Now you shall have no singing or piano playing, and Mr Jasper will have to find something even noisier than the Appassionata to assuage his ill humour."

_Sweet relief_. The painful wrist was a superfluous inconvenience now, but I did not mind, since I was confined to bed in any case. I did not even have to run the risk of catching his eye during Cathedral Eucharist.

I wrote a wobbly letter to Eddy with my left hand.

"_Dear Eddy_

_If you can read this, you will find that I am unwell and my wrist is sprained. It serves me right for the way I spoke to you at our last meeting, and please believe that I am very sorry for it…"_

Within a fortnight, I was well again, but poor Kitty caught it far worse than I did and was obliged to return home for the rest of the term. Now, surrounded with wet blankets like Edith for company, I had little to look forward to between this dreary November and Christmas.

I sat on my bed on a rainy Thursday, waiting for Jasper to arrive for my first piano lesson in three weeks. He had sent flowers when I was ill, pretending they were from Edwin. I knew they weren't. Edwin barely knew flowers existed.

I watched the petals drop, listening for the dreaded knock on the door and the summons that would follow. I knew that I could not avoid this lesson, but despite this my brain furnished elaborate and ridiculous scenarios that might deliver me from the necessity.

Too late. The knocker fell, three times, heavy as doom.

I heard the buzz of voices, two storeys down: Twinkleton's twitter, Jasper's manly baritone. I dropped my head between my knees and waited for a gaoler to lead me to the scaffold.

My executioner did not seem in such bad humour as I had expected. He looked up from the piano and smiled, quite genuinely, I think. He looked altogether different when he smiled; one could imagine him being a normal person.

"How is our invalid?" he said in greeting.

"I am well, thank you."

"This is good news indeed. I have some more good news for you, if you will allow me."

"Good news?" I thought immediately of Edwin. Was he in Cloisterham?

"I took the liberty of purchasing some sheet music while you were indisposed. Your favourite. Chopin."

He removed a hard-backed volume from his case, bearing the legend: _'Preludes of Frederic Chopin, Opus 28_'.

"Oh." I ran my fingers over the embossed leather, rather intrigued at this turn of events.

"There are one or two that I think, with some practice, you could manage without too much difficulty."

"Does this mean I can send Mr Carl Czerny and his fingering exercises packing?"

Jasper chuckled. "No such luck. But if you make good progress, I have promised Reverend and Mrs Crisparkle that you might play at their next Alternate Musical Wednesday. How should you like that?"

"Oh no!" Consternated, I turned to him. "I do not like to perform in public. I should be nervous."

He put his head to one side, looking at me with a kind of tender reproachfulness that made my stomach lurch. "Nervousness is easily conquered," he said. "I will be there with you. You have nothing to fear." I thought for a petrified moment that he was going to touch me, but instead he opened the book. "This is suitable for you, I think. Number 7."

It was a charming piece, and mercifully short. I felt Jasper breathing down my neck while I tried to align the chords and it made me fumble, but if I practised, it could be much better, I was sure.

He was awful as ever over the finger exercises – my hands seemed to have lost all capacity for accuracy during my three week sabbatical – but when we returned to the Chopin he was all mellowness again.

"You will be the star of the Crisparkle salon," he said, closing the book at the end of the lesson and turning to me so that our knees almost touched. I felt a swift suffusion of heat, which I thought came from my blush, but also seemed to have another point of origin, somewhere below my stomach. "Make sure you practise well."

"I will."

"Good. I…" He broke off, looked at the piano keys, then back at me. "I missed these lessons, while you were ill. Choristers are all very well but there is a special pleasure in taking an individual person and watching them blossom under one's tutelage." He smiled, but the smile was most odd, almost a tic, and his eyes were quite wild under his lowering brows. The words were like a declaration, but of a coded sort, weighty with hidden meaning.

At once, my old worries were back, threaded through my mind, naggingly inescapable.

I practised the Chopin whenever I could, but it reminded me of him, the innocent notes resembling ugly black twists of threat whenever I played, the stave like bars in a prison through which I peered, looking for the dark heart of John Jasper.

The fateful Wednesday came, a mild and sodden night. Miss Twinkleton and I huddled beneath Jasper's large black umbrella as we hastened through the Close to Reverend Crisparkle's house.

His mother was almost hysterically welcoming, giving the impression that Jasper and I were famous virtuosi visiting from distant lands rather than the cathedral choirmaster and his obscure pupil.

"It is so lovely to see you here, Miss Bud," she assured me. "You are quite a grown lady now. Goodness me, how well I remember this little ringletted orphan, arriving at the Nuns' House ten years ago. Don't you, Sept? No, I suppose you were too young."

"I believe I was up at Oxford then, mother."

"Oh, yes, I suppose you were. And such a beauty now. Young Mr Drood will be the envy of all Egypt."

Jasper, who had been sipping a glass of wine with an expression of benign pride, as if he were owed the credit for my growing up, scowled at the mention of his nephew.

I _wasn't_ imagining all this, was I? He _did_…no. I didn't want to voice the suspicion, to clothe it with credence.

"Oh, I shouldn't think so," I said awkwardly. "It's the land of Cleopatra, after all."

"Cleopatra!" Mrs Crisparkle patted Miss Twinkleton on the arm. "Fancy! Well, Miss Bud, you must play for us now, for I declare I have been longing to hear how you have improved since our dear Mr Jasper took over your tuition. I'm sure he is the best teacher for miles around, so we must prepare ourselves for a treat."

Miss Critchell was sitting in a far corner; if she had taken offence at this (or even heard it) she did not say so.

My legs weakened by nervousness, I made my way to the piano. Jasper followed me.

"What are you doing?" I hissed. "I can play this by myself."

"I thought you might require the supportive presence of your devoted music master."

"No, no, you can sit down with the others over there. I shall be perfectly all right." He hovered a moment longer and I flapped a hand at him. "Please!"

In retrospect, perhaps I would have preferred for him to sit beside me rather than facing me from less than a yard away. Although I tried to keep my eyes low on the keys, I could see that he watched me like a hawk from the first note to the last, oblivious to anything or anyone else in the room.

My relief on finishing flooded me. I had not even made any mistakes, so I felt justified in accepting a measure of the applause that followed.

"Marvellous, marvellous!" Mrs Crisparkle was in heaven. "What excellent progress she has made, Mr Jasper. You must be extremely proud of her."

"Oh, I am." He gave me a smile that was all shadow and took hold of my fingers as I left the piano, guiding me to the empty seat beside him. "Very much so."

"You must let me get you a drink, dear Miss Bud. Does Miss Twinkleton permit a little drop of wine?"

As the dowagers fussed and chattered on the subject of suitable drinks for young ladies, Jasper leant towards me so that our shoulders touched and said, "Well done."

A tickle ran down my arm and through my body, a shivery thing.

"Oh, it was nothing," I said. "Just a simple piece."

His breath, red wine and menthol, inveigled its way into my senses. The scent of him was subtle yet powerful and I felt a little faint. I accepted the small glass of wine gratefully, burying my nose in it and blocking out Jasper. I didn't dare catch his eye.

"And shall you play for us, Jasper?" asked Rev. Crisparkle, breaking off from a conversation with the Dean. "Or shall you sing?"

He rose, his coat unfurling beside me, until he stood straight, casting his eye around the assembly.

"Miss Bud's Chopin Preludes have captured my interest, I confess. I should like to try my hand at one, if you will allow."

"We are always delighted to hear you play – you have such exquisite sensibilities," trilled Miss Twinkleton. I had to shut my eyes to keep from rolling them.

Jasper went to the piano and turned a few pages of the score. His head and shoulders were visible behind the instrument but, with luck, he would be too absorbed in his playing to look at me.

"This is number 15, in D Flat Major," he said.

The melody began as charmingly as anything, a sweet and slightly melancholy air with a repeated note that seemed significant but not overpowering. I looked around at my fellows in the audience, the ladies rapt behind their fans, the gentlemen trying to assume expressions of spiritual appreciation.

I looked back at the piano to find Jasper's eyes upon me, only briefly, but enough to chill my soul. The pretty tune slipped with heartless swiftness into something much darker; menacing chords expressing threat while that same repeated note became a bludgeon. What torments, what frustrations, what anguish of spirit lay in that music. I sat aghast, unable to remove my gaze from Jasper, who seemed to hold it by means of a compulsion that sprang from the notes themselves. Every so often, a shaft of stormy grey from his eyes told me more clearly than ever what the prelude so eloquently expressed – that all this ferocity, all this devastating longing was directed at me.

Rooted to my chair, appalled and terrified, I longed for the music to stop, but even when the worst of it was over, the melody continued to rend my heart, Jasper's muscular playing lending it a force I could not imagine even the composer intending for it.

O, there could be no doubt of it now, no pretending of innocence. John Jasper's pursuit of me was all too real.

He closed the lid and accepted a shower of uncertain applause.

"How very dramatic," commented the Dean. "I don't know much about these Romantic fellows, I must say. Handel's my man. But you seemed to play that awfully well, Jasper, as always."

I hardly dared look around for fear that everybody had made the same realisation as I – that Jasper had just declared a hopeless passion by way of the piano – yet they all started rabbitting on about cake and tea as if he had played nothing more emotionally taxing than Mozart's variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Had nobody else made this horrifying connection?

Before he could come to sit beside me again, I hastened over to the bookshelves, affecting to examine the Crisparkle's fine collection of Edward Gibbons while I dabbed surreptitiously at my eyes with my handkerchief. My hands shook, and I did not want Jasper to see it.

Mrs Crisparkle shoved a plate of seed cake under my nose.

"Do take some food, my dear."

"I'm afraid…I'm afraid…" The power of speech had fled, along with my composure. "Oh, Mrs Crisparkle, I feel a little…faint…"

I swiped at her arm, stumbling. The men all swooped forward at once. I don't know which of them caught me – I hope not Jasper – but the next thing I knew I was inhaling sal volatile on a chaise in a darkened room that was not the salon.

"Oh, Rosa." It was Miss Twinkleton. My head lay in her lap and I could smell her violet powders. "Whatever is the matter?"

"My stays…too tight," I said with a cough. "I did not mean to cause to a scene."

"No need to blame yourself, precious child. I think perhaps we should say goodnight and go back home. You have over-exerted yourself. I daresay the traces of your illness still linger. You must rest."

In my bed, I could only see his image, at the piano.

He desired me. I had not asked to be desired. I had not asked for any of this – for femininity, for womanhood, for beauty, for new curves on my body, for the monthly blood and the furtive, guilty thoughts.

I had not asked for my betrothal to Edwin, but I had always known it had to be so. Jasper knew this also, and he made no active move to usurp his nephew, so why did he make me know that he desired me? Why did he have to impress his wicked self on my consciousness in this way?

For he was there in every furtive, guilty thought while Edwin figured not at all. While the sinful place between my legs swelled and grew heavy, it was Jasper's face I saw, his arms I felt around me, his hands in my hair, his mouth fierce and possessive on mine.

O, he was the devil. How was I to ever extricate myself from him? To encourage him was unthinkable, to avoid him impossible. I was to marry his nephew!

Now our lessons provoked more than the unease and vague dread that had afflicted me before. Instead, a visceral fear gripped me while I waited for the knock at the door. I looked through the schoolroom window, oblivious to the noise and chatter behind me, until the wind blew him up the path to me.

He held his hat on his head, walking into the bluster, a man on a mission. He looked up and I darted back behind the curtain. I felt like an animal in a trap. No matter how I twisted and turned, I would never be able to escape.

"It is your music master," said one of the girls, joining me at the window. "You will be wanted downstairs."

_You will be wanted._

"Ah," he said, breaking off from the usual inane Twinklechat in the hallway. "Fresh from her triumph on the concert stage."

"Hardly a triumph," I muttered, entering the music room ahead of him.

"And so modest as well."

_As well as what?_

"My regret is that Edwin could not be there to see me," I said pointedly.

He sat down on the piano stool, silent for a while, foraging in his case. Mention of Edwin had perhaps darkened his mood.

"Next time," he said at length, handing me the manuscript for a new singing piece. His smile was sickly, a pale forced thing. "Next time, Edwin will hear you sing. We…we were sorry you had to leave so soon."

"It could not be helped. What is this song? _Believe me if all those endearing young charms. _I do not know it."

"It is a well-known air. See if you can sight-read it for me."

The subject of his incendiary prelude-playing thus sidestepped, he launched into the introduction.

The lesson was, in character, the first of many similar. Formal and correct in all respects, yet with an undercurrent one could almost dip one's finger in and touch. Nothing was said, yet passionate words lurked always on the tip of his tongue. Nothing was done, yet violence burned in the air like grapeshot. His civil discourse cloaked anger and savagery. Increasingly, he looked ill, sometimes stopping at the piano to put a hand to his chest and pause for breath.

I tried to make myself as small and unnoticeable as I could, to fold myself away, to blank my expressions, to excise all remnants of feeling from my speech. I would give him nothing to desire and then he might leave me be.

Yet I felt his eyes always upon me, even when he was absent.

I avoided passing through the arch of his gatehouse lodge, imagining him watching me from behind his shutter. Even in the High Street, when I walked abroad with the other girls, I sometimes thought he was following me. He was in the sigh of the wind, the clop of the horses' hooves, the shouts of the draymen. He was everywhere.

I was so sure he was behind us one Saturday afternoon as I walked with Edith and two others that I drew them hastily into a drapers shop to escape the prickling at the back of my neck.

"Rosy, why are we in here?" whispered Edith, although the other two had fallen with enthusiasm into the examination of fabric swatches. "You said nothing about ordering new gowns."

"I fancy I should like to…to…" I looked distractedly at the window. John Jasper passed by, slowly.

"Young ladies, may I be of assistance?"

"I am not sure…I…" I looked again at the window. Jasper had gone.

"Rosy." Edith tugged at my sleeve.

"I think you might have some blue ribbon."

"Oh, indeed I do, Miss."

I bought the ribbon, despite having no need for it, and we stepped back into the street. Immediately Jasper descended upon me, like a malevolent crow from the heavens. He must have been standing by the door, waiting for me.

"Miss Bud, what a happy chance. I am come from the Post Office."

"Are you? We are going home."

"I will walk with you. I have word from Edwin."

"Oh, do not trouble yourself on our account."

"It is no trouble. He will be in Cloisterham this day week, and will stay for the Christmas season."

"That is wonderful news."

"Isn't it?"

He said it with an odd intensity, as if daring me to deny it. We arrived at the gatehouse lodge.

"Please come no further, Mr Jasper. You must not put yourself out. We will be perfectly well."

A panic was coming upon me, my breath shortening, everything spinning beyond my control.

"Miss Bud." He put a gloved hand on my forearm, compelling me to face him.

_O, what he could do to me. Bruise my flesh without even knowing it, crush me into powder._

My eyes must have given away everything: my fear, my repulsion, my…

"You are not well," he said, rebuking me. "Please, allow me to accompany you."

For a moment that knocked the breath from my body, I wanted to send the others away, to stay with him, to go with him into his gatehouse lodge.

He saw it. His fingers tightened around my elbow. He licked dry lips.

My reason returned. I jerked myself away from him.

"No, we are well," I told him, close to tears. "We are well. Good day."

I ran along the path, my head down, my fellows at my heels.

"Rosy, why do you run so? Rosy, what is wrong?"

If I only knew.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Before I post this chapter, I need to mention a couple of things. This is where my story starts to tie in with the book/TV series and I should explain why I have taken some elements from the book and others from the TV drama.**

**In the book, the action happens around Christmas. In the drama, it seems to be late spring/early summer, for the purposes of condensing the time-frame (it makes NO sense to me that Jasper would go nowhere near Rosa for six blimmin months – do opium-crazed stalkers give the objects of their obsession half-year stalk-breaks? Unlikely.). Also, what cathedral choirmaster would pick Christmas Eve to commit a complex murder/body-concealment? It's the busiest time of the freaking ecclesiastical year. Wouldn't they be doing Midnight Mass anyway?**

**As you'll see, this doesn't need to be taken into consideration for my story, so I've gone with the Christmas setting, which works pretty well for me.**

**This chapter involves a fair bit of transcription and dialogue directly from the drama (more accessible than the book) which was a pain to write and I'm quite glad to be through it and into the wonderful world of my Dickensian AU!**

**I hope you enjoy it.**

**Chapter Four**

All ranged around the drawing room windows like pigeons in search of a crumb they huddled, watching out for Edwin.

It was the last day of term and I could console myself that tomorrow they would all be gone, but for now they were determined to wring the last drop of irritation from me.

"If he does not come soon, I shall die of longing."

"Rosa has no idea how lucky she is."

Searching my cloak for my pear drops, I tried to silence them.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, you know nothing about it."

I found the pear drops just as a general gasp exploded on the air.

"Ooh, there he is!"

"Look at his lovely hair!"

"Will you please," I begged, "be quiet."

They lifted their skirts as one and flitted from the room, all the better to hang over the banisters and ogle him, sighs of "So romantic" drifting after them.

I reached into the bag for a pear drop, popped it in my mouth. No kissing for us.

He was admitted to the drawing room. I tried to smile and look welcoming, but I was too nervous and the girls' fuss had put me out of sorts.

"A frown for your Eddy, Puss," he remonstrated, holding out arms that I didn't rush into.

"It is just so absurd," I snapped.

"What is absurd?"

"The whole thing. Girls and servants scuttling about when it is only you come to call."

"A nice way to welcome your fiancé."

I stood, arms folded, unable to break my frown.

"Rosy," he said, conciliatory, coming closer. I turned my face away, eluding his arms.

"I can't kiss you, Eddy, because I've got a pear drop in my mouth."

Miss Twinkleton made one of her customary unscheduled entrances into the room, feigning a search for some tweezers. Her version of chaperoning always amused Edwin and he sniggered at her exiting figure.

I wanted the ice between us to crack, truly I did, but something wouldn't let me smile.

He raised a hand in surrender. "Shall I just go?"

"No," I said, stepping forward. I could have said something sweet, something about missing him, something about waiting all morning for his footsteps up the drive. Instead I said, "No, not so soon, the girls will want to know why."

His crestfallen air pierced me. I had gone too far.

"So, how are you?"

"Well, I'd like to reply 'much the better for seeing you, Rosy'…" He trailed off, the implication clear.

"I am sorry," I said at last. "I am pleased you are here, truly. I just…things prey on my mind."

"Oh, Puss, what? Tell your Eddy. Here, sit down. Miss Tisher has promised to bring tea. What could possibly be worrying my own girl?"

We sat, side by side but fretfully distant, on a sofa.

"What you said in your letter…about Christmas dinner…"

"Don't you think it a capital idea? Uncle Jack was most keen to propose it."

"I am sure I shall never be able to eat a morsel in the presence of…" I shuddered a little, finding his name difficult to voice, "_Uncle Jack_."

"Oh, but whyever not, Puss?" Edwin laughed, thinking me ridiculous.

"He is such an ogre," I said, detesting myself for putting on the prissy baby-voice again, but finding it second nature in Edwin's presence. "He makes me want to cry, Eddy. He is like Bluebeard."

Edwin burst out laughing, but he put a comforting hand on my arm all the same.

"Bluebeard in his castle and Uncle Jack in his gatehouse – hardly the same people, Pussy. But you must know him well enough, from your music lessons. You know, you are a heedless girl sometimes. If he is strict with you, I am sure it is only for your good."

"That is not what I mean."

"Then what _do_ you mean?"

"Oh…" I wrung my hands. "I don't know, Eddy, truly I don't know how to put it. But your Uncle Jack and my Christmas goose do not sit well together."

"I think it is you who is being the goose."

Miss Tisher entered with the tea tray, setting it solemnly before us before checking that Edwin's hand was not anywhere it shouldn't be.

"And you are being a beast," I hissed, tight-lipped, as soon as Miss Tisher was out of the room.

Edwin shot to his feet and spread wide his arms.

"'Tis the season to be jolly," he declaimed. "And, since you will not be, I will take my jollity and my person to call on Uncle Jack. Good day."

I drank both cups of tea, slowly, enjoying the solitude despite my unease.

What if Edwin perceived Jasper's true feelings? What if it led to bad blood or blows between them? I stood up and looked bleakly down the path, making out the distant outline of the gatehouse, imagining Eddy and Jasper, taking tea just as I did, discussing me…

I felt a sense of momentum, a presentiment of change, that oft-discussed goose walking over my grave. The tranquillity I had known since coming to the Nuns' House was going to be ruffled.

The girls left for the Christmas holiday the very next day and I was alone with the mistresses and maids again, cooped up with my pincushions and piano practice.

Edwin called in the afternoon and we walked to town, avoiding the gatehouse, and tiffed over toffees in the sweetshop.

"You know, I think I understand your fear of Uncle Jack," he said ruminatively as we walked back by way of the graveyard.

"Oh, you do? Truly?" I seized his hands and he pulled me against him. We stood there like that, among the dead, for a moment of communion.

"He is not well, Pussy," Edwin murmured. "He takes laudanum. I fear…it has affected him. His moods, his…well, he seems rather low in spirits."

"You think he is ill?" Had I misinterpreted symptoms of malady for love? Could it be so? I clutched at the straw.

"Yes, and his decline has pulled his humour down with it. I have not known him so queer and out of sorts before. He made me promise not to divulge particulars…but I cannot understand it."

"He told you what ailed him?" I tensed, gripping his hands fiercely.

"I thought him so happy here…he has a station in life that accords him respect. He has his music, a comfortable living. He is a solitary kind of man, that I'll allow, and perhaps some company might…yes! Some company. That might be just the thing, you know. I think Uncle Jack needs a wife."

I took a step back, laughing incredulously.

"Who will fit the bill, Pussy? What single young ladies are there in Cloisterham? We must find one and introduce them. What say you?"

"I say you are ridiculous! I know of nobody I would wish Mr Jasper upon."

"Oh, but you are prejudiced against him and you are unjustly so, for he speaks highly of you."

A pang shot from my heart to my solar plexus.

"Does he?"

"Indeed he does. He says I don't deserve you. And he called you the loveliest girl in the world."

"O, he did not."

"He did, I would swear to it. So you see, you misjudge him grievously. Poor Jack. He cannot help his dour countenance. But his heart is in the right place, Puss."

"I am sure he has no heart. But…the Crisparkles expect visitors from Ceylon on Wednesday. One of them is a girl, my age. Perhaps she and Jasper…"

"Perhaps! Excellent, Pussy. We shall conspire further. But for now, I would like to leave this graveyard, for it has such a gloomy aspect and the sky grows grey. I think we may have rain later."

In my bed that night I mulled over our conversation.

If Jasper was ill and taking large quantities of laudanum, perhaps he was not himself. His strange and hopeless pursuit of me might be some kind of…opium dream, while the balance of his mind was deranged. But the idea of his derangement rendered him even more frightening, for how could I defend myself against a madman?

And then, right at the heart of my fears, deep in their core, I understood that I did not want him to be ill or mad. And neither did I want to see him with another woman.

I most particularly did not ever want to see him with another woman.

Those restless nights I dreamt of my father, such as I remembered. He appeared not as a whole person but a being made of cloth and full of tears and rents. He had lost his life when I was a young child, but he had made provision for me. I must marry Edwin. There was no other path mapped out for me.

On the Wednesday morning, the Reverend Crisparkle paid a call after breakfast, while the Misses Twinkleton and Tisher sat with me, studding oranges with cloves for our Christmas punch.

"Good morning, ladies, and I am calling on you fresh from communion at the cathedral to say how very much mother and I look forward to seeing you at our Alternate Musical Wednesday tonight."

My heart jumped into my throat. I had almost forgotten that Jasper had extorted my agreement to sing that silly song for them tonight. No prospect could be less welcome.

"Oh, yes, it will be the highlight of our week," exclaimed Miss Twinkleton. "Miss Rosa has been practising so assiduously. And I understand the new young people arrive today?"

"Yes, yes, the Landlesses. Mr Neville and Miss Helena. I trust you have everything ready for the young lady, Miss Twinkleton?"

"Our dear Rosa has herself offered to share a room with her. Such a hospitable girl, she is."

"That's very kind of you, Miss Bud. Miss Landless will find our country strange at first, but you will make her settling in so much the pleasanter. Imagine travelling for weeks on end from those distant, humid climes to the midst of an English winter."

"I shall be fascinated to meet her," I said, genuinely. I had never met an exotic person before, and already I had resolved that she would not feel my own sense of disconnection and loneliness. Although, of course, she had her twin, the young gentleman.

Reverend Crisparkle smiled at me over his teacup.

"Thank you. So shall I. Well, I must go and meet the omnibus. Until tonight, then."

I did not want to sing.

I put on my light blue silk and let Jessy put up my hair, but all the while I felt an oppression of the senses that threatened to unleash tears.

I waited in the drawing room with Miss Twinkleton while outside the wind threw dead leaves against the window. Over its gusts, I heard the tread of boots on gravel.

"They are here," she said, rising majestically. "Come, Rosa."

Edwin and Jasper stood in the hallway waiting while Jessy held the door. Edwin helped me into my wrap, but Jasper watched me all the time, pretending to assist Miss Twinkleton.

"I trust you are in good voice, Miss Bud," he said.

"I hope nobody is expecting too much," I replied.

"Nonsense. You will charm the room. Isn't it so, Ned?"

"I have never heard Rosy sing," said Edwin, rather discouragingly. "Is she good?"

Jasper smiled and said no more.

He knew I was not, of course.

He took Miss Twinkleton's arm, and I took Eddy's, and we set off into the night.

Before we had gone half a pace, Eddy began to talk about some article he had seen in the newspaper about Egypt. The short journey was consequently bad-tempered, and Jasper's constant glances over his shoulder at me didn't improve matters.

When Mr Crisparkle opened the door to us, it was a glum little party he found on his doorstep.

"Ah, our honoured guests," he said brightly, diving on Miss Twinkleton and removing her cloak while Edwin fussed over mine.

On the way to the drawing room I avoided Jasper's eyes, looking down, seeing only a portion of his legs and feet. I was with Eddy, I kept telling myself. All would be well. No man would attempt to make love to a woman with her fiancé present, even through music.

Two young people sat on the sofa, equal in stature and similar in dark looks. These were the Landlesses, to whom Edwin and I were formally introduced. They stared at Edwin, eating him up with their eyes as if he were some figure from their distant past with whom they were reunited. The girl scarcely gave me a second glance, though her brother gave me one thunderstruck look before they started jawing about once knowing of a person named Drood in Ceylon. It is an unusual name, I suppose, but the coincidence didn't seem sufficient to induce the apparent shock and amazement they portrayed.

The awkward atmosphere was broken by Mrs Crisparkle chivvying me and Jasper to the piano.

"Some songs before tea – that's the rule," she told the Landlesses.

Unenthused, I stood my ground for as long as possible but Jasper, on his way to the instrument, put a hand on my arm as he passed. He thought he made it look like a careless, natural gesture, but the heat soaked through the silk and I felt his fingers on my skin long afterward, as if they were imprinted there.

I put a hand on the corner of the instrument for support, too shaky to stand without it. I started to sing, but my breath would not co-operate and all I was conscious of was Jasper's unwavering stare.

Surely everybody could see how he looked at me, surely Edwin must notice that his beloved uncle was seconds away from kicking the instrument aside and seizing me into his arms? And if not Edwin, then the waves of repressed passion flowing from Jasper to me must have struck _somebody_.

Could so many people be so blind?

Or was it me? It was a laudanum haze and nothing more.

Whatever it was, it made my belly tighten and my skin prickle. Uncomfortable heat rose to my surface, breaking into perspiration. My voice began to tremble and my breath stopped short. By the end of the first verse, I could stand no more of it.

Jasper began verse two, but I left the piano.

"Please, that's enough."

Edwin leapt to his feet, wanting himself spared some embarrassment, no doubt, but I was not going to listen to his blandishments tonight. He tried to get me back to the piano, but I found I had unlikely allies in both Neville and Helena Landless, who castigated him severally for his attempts to force me.

Edwin tried to laugh it off, but I could see he was in a snit, and then he did the worst thing of all and blamed Jasper for my reluctance – fairly, of course, but he was not to know it!

"There, Jack," he said, as Helena led me away to longed-for safety. "Miss Landless agrees with me – you are a monster, and she's afraid of you too."

"Never," said Helena, helping me into a chair.

Jasper rose pointedly and silently and stalked out of the room, making some excuse about a headache to Mrs Crisparkle. Once he was gone, I breathed, a long sighing breath, and offered Helena a half-hearted smile.

"I am so very obliged to you," I whispered beneath Rev. Crisparkle's efforts to smooth things over between Eddy and Neville. "I simply hate these evenings."

"Some people love to show themselves off and some prefer a more modest way of living. You, I think, are the latter."

"Yes, yes, I am. Yet I seem to attract attention all the time, despite myself. It is most perplexing."

"Your pretty face and figure will not help you in your wish for obscurity."

"Oh, don't. I am no Helen of Troy, I'm sure. You are far more beautiful than I am."

I believed this to be true. With her serene countenance and her grave, dark eyes, Helena had a stately handsomeness that I admired beyond measure. My fussy curls and frills seemed childish in comparison.

"No, indeed, I think you are far kinder. Shall I ask Miss Twinkleton if we can go? I am very tired and nothing appeals to me more than the prospect of bed at this moment."

"Bed, oh yes. That would be lovely."

Helena was pleasantly impressed with the little room Miss Twinkleton had provided for us to share and, as I took down her coils of beautiful blue-black hair, we made better acquaintance.

"I imagine we shan't be here together for very long," she said.

"No, indeed," I said, aiming for an airy tone. "For, come this summer, I shall be married and away."

"Married to a man who makes you cry in company."

I felt a twist of loyalty to Edwin. Helena seemed so nice, but she did not know him, after all.

"That's just Eddy's way. He doesn't mean it."

I let the brush glide through her hair.

"You do love him, Rosa?"

I flushed hot. She posed the question I couldn't answer truthfully without bringing terrible trouble on myself.

"What a question!" I prevaricated. "I have been engaged to Eddy forever…well…of course I love him."

She stood up, facing me.

"You are so very young."

"Seventeen." Girls much younger than I bear children. Helena said nothing. She knew I had not answered fully. She wanted more. "Sometimes I wonder," I admitted, "how can I be sure what love feels like?"

I wondered if Helena knew. Had she loved a man, back in Ceylon?

She bent forward and spoke into my ear.

"I only know what I hope it feels like."

We smiled, the confidence warming us. What did it feel like? Truly, I wondered. What did it feel like for…no. I did not wish to think of him.

As if she read my thoughts, Helena turned away and said, "The other gentleman."

My heart raced.

"Don't speak of him."

"You do know he loves you."

The words fell on my head like lead weights, crushing me. At last they had been spoken. What I had thought only I knew was known by another. Alarm froze my blood.

"Oh, don't say that out loud."

Later, as we lay in bed, I tried to explain what Jasper made me feel – but without mentioning anything that might put a bad face on my own attachment to Edwin.

"He terrifies me," I told her. "When he corrects me, and strikes a note or a chord…his voice is in the music, whispering. He pursues me as a lover."

Helena raised her head a little, her eyes filled with alarm.

"What words does he use, little one?"

"Oh, I could argue with words, but he has made a slave of me with his music. He has forced me to understand him without his saying a word, and he has forced me to keep silent without uttering a threat."

"Is that why you don't tell Edwin?"

"Oh, Eddy is devoted to him. John Jasper is more than an uncle to him – he is a guardian and protector. You must never breathe a word. Promise me, on your life."

"Of course," she said, and I knew I could trust her. "Good night, little one. I'm here now. There's no need to be scared."

She reassured me and as I drifted into sleep, I indulged pleasant fantasies about the two of us turning our backs on men and setting up home as spinsters, sharing travels and experiences together. Then, as my thoughts dispersed into fragments, the darkness returned. The presence of Jasper, the breath of him on my neck, his fingers on mine at the piano. Edwin in the background, his heart breaking, while Jasper and I wound around each other like lustful vines until we were inextricably linked.

I woke up in a cold sweat, but Helena slept on.

The next morning at breakfast, Miss Twinkleton was all of a fluster when Helena and I entered the room.

"Oh dear, oh dear," she muttered, fidgeting with egg cosies and giving Helena a vaguely daggers look. "Such terrible things. What are we coming to?"

"What is amiss?" I sat down and reached for a pair of tongs.

"Your brother, Miss Landless."

"Neville?"

"All Cloisterham is talking of it. Fisticuffs with poor Mr Drood – fisticuffs in the open air, in plain sight. Mr Jasper had to pull them apart before there was murder."

We both sat with our jaws wide, staring at each other.

"What led to this?" Helena demanded.

"I'm sure I don't know. Your brother seems a savage sort of boy." She sniffed. "I hope I haven't made a grave mistake."

"Oh, Miss Twinkleton, you cannot blame Helena for her brother's misdemeanour."

I realised that my first thought had been for Helena.

"Is Eddy all right?" I asked, a little late.

"Yes, yes."

"I should perhaps visit him…oh, but…" It would mean a trip to the gatehouse. One of the Misses would accompany me, no doubt, but all the same, I would prefer to remain clear of Jasper's domain.

"I'm sure he's fine, dear," said Miss Twinkleton. "But Mr Landless is in disgrace. Reverend Crisparkle should send him back to Ceylon, if you ask me."

Helena refrained from rising to the bait. She was a much more self-controlled person than her twin, I thought. I admired her for it.

"I am sorry for my brother's conduct," she said to me.

I merely shrugged and cracked the top of my boiled egg.

"It is not your fault. And Eddy can be…provoking…sometimes."

"My brother is too easily provoked. I have tried to help him." She sighed. "He has tiger in his blood."

She went to call on him at mid-morning, and I was left to my own devices, supposing I shouldn't expect Eddy, who would be busy bemoaning his sore knuckles, or whatever Neville had bequeathed him.

However, I was not bereft of visitors, for my guardian, Mr Grewgious arrived unexpectedly from London.

At first, as we sat in the parlour with Miss Twinkleton, it seemed his visit was no more than routine. He asked his usual questions about my health and happiness and financial situation, noting my answers in his little book – such a funny gentleman, he was, but kind and sweet as you could wish.

But then he brought up the subject of marriage and I saw, all at once, a chance. But the conversation was not for Miss Twinkleton's ears, and so I accompanied him outside for a walk in the grounds.

Once we were alone, I asked the question that had preyed on my mind these past months.

"What happens if we do not get married?"

He referred me to my father's will and testament, but I had no understanding of that contorted, obsolescent language and asked him to be good enough to elucidate for me.

"Then you will remain my ward for another four years, until you are twenty-one, and then come into your inheritance just the same."

I could not ask the question without his drawing a conclusion from it, and he duly did. He guessed that I was considering ending my engagement, and that I needed reassurance that there would be no legal repercussions for me if I did. He also understood the more delicate anxiety that followed from failing to carry out my late father's wishes.

"Do you think he would ever have wanted you to do anything that made you unhappy?" he said. "Preposterous."

My heart lifted. I felt like a new person, all the old questions that had run through my head so ceaselessly finally silenced. I could be free. Tears sprang to my eyes and I embraced dear old Grewgious, burying my face in his dusty lapel.

He bade me goodbye, stating his intention of calling on Edwin, and left me to run through the rose beds, swinging around and around while the wind played with my skirts.

On Christmas Eve I was in giddy spirits, despite my dread of the necessary interview with Edwin that would take place when he called on me that afternoon.

Helena and I dressed the tree while the wind whipped up outside, gathering in force to bend the trees to its will.

"You are in high humour today," she commented, smiling. "And I am less anxious now, about Neville. He seemed much calmer when I saw him earlier."

"Good. And we shall all eat Christmas dinner together at the Crisparkles."

"Oh. I thought you were going to spend the day with Edwin and Mr Jasper?"

"Well…I hope to evade that necessity. My digestion won't stand for it. Oh, here is Eddy. Excuse me."

I opened the door and, before he could step inside, suggested we go to the cathedral. There would be a Christingle service later in the afternoon, but choir practice was over so it should be empty. A good, quiet place to end an engagement – Eddy would surely not think to make a fuss in the house of God.

"My sweet Puss, whatever you wish shall be granted today," he said with a flourish.

O, he was being attentive and sweet. This might be even more difficult than I anticipated. We walked to the cathedral, chattering idly about Christmas dinners and gifts. I expected he had got me gloves again. He always got me gloves.

Inside the ancient stone, I found a quiet spot in the south transept and we sat, contemplating the silent splendour all around us.

He reached into the inside of his jacket and took out a box.

It had to be said. It _had_ to be said.

"Rosa," he opened, but I headed him off.

"Eddy, let's be kind to each other. And let's be brave."

His face, confused and adorable, oh dear, could I do this?

"Kind. Kind to one another for once in our lives, starting today and forever. Let's change to brother and sister."

I had hoped he might let out a great laugh and confess to the same thought, but he simply stared.

"Not get married?"

"No."

"In spite of our fathers' wishes?"

"Yes."

He looked away. He was shaking. Behind a rood screen I caught the quickest glimpse of shadow, but Edwin spoke and I was distracted.

"If, after all, there is another young man―"

"There is not, I promise you."

"But I love you, Rosa," he said, so woeful that I half-wanted to take the words back.

"And I love you, with all my heart, but not…as a wife should love a husband." However that was. "As I believe she should. As I hope…"

Oh no, that could not be said. That was not a kind thing to say to one's jilted fiancé.

"This is so hard," I whispered, unable to look at him now. The shadow was gone. I thought I heard a footstep, up in the nave.

Eddy put the box back.

"Don't hate me," I pleaded.

"No, no, no, you mistake me, my dear Rosa. I mean…your courage and your clarity of thought and…I am sorry too."

He was trying to be nice and I was so grateful I wanted to fling my arms around him.

"Just think, Eddy – how much better to be sorry now than later, when it will be too late.

"We will never be angry with one another again."

"How wonderful it will be."

As if we shared legs, we leapt up from the stone bench and embraced, with tears and apologies and promises to be the best brother and sister than ever lived and looked out for each other.

"I just ask you one thing, Rosa," he said, finally releasing me, his eyes as solemn as I had ever seen them. "Let's not say anything to anybody until after Christmas."

"You think I will change my mind..?"

"I cannot bear to spend Christmas Day listening to Uncle Jack's recriminations about letting you slip through my fingers. It will put him out so. As a kindness to him…and to me…please indulge my whim."

"Well, I suppose that will be all right. We shall tell them on Boxing Day, then?"

"Or New Year's Eve, perhaps."

"Eddy!"

"Very well," he sighed. "Boxing Day."

He wandered towards the altar, looking along the aisle to the great arched door.

"Shall I walk you back to the Nuns' House?"

"I may stay here and say a prayer or two," I replied, thinking to light a candle to my poor disappointed father.

"Well, then, I shall see you here tomorrow." He paused for a moment, perhaps waiting for me to beg him to stay, perhaps contemplating begging me to change my mind, then he turned determinedly on his heel and strode out.

So it ended, the most momentous interview of my life.

I found a pew and rested my head on my hands, trying to fix on words of prayer and coming out only with "I'm sorry, so sorry, so sorry, Papa, please understand" before shedding a few tears.

I was more clear-headed as I made my way out of a side door into the blasting wind. What I had done was right. I could not have done otherwise.

I crossed the grass towards the Close, intent on completing the ten minute walk to the Nuns' House in the fastest possible time before my cloak was torn off my shoulders by the gathering gale.

I had not been walking long when I became aware of footsteps quickening in pace behind me, the impatient stride of a man. Suddenly, at my shoulder, John Jasper manifested, bringing furious colour to my cheeks and augmented speed to my feet.

"Miss Bud, I am surprised to see you unaccompanied. Where is my nephew?"

"Oh, he, he…he went. Before."

Unexpectedly cornered like this, I found that every coherent thought flew from my head. My blood rushed in my veins, my body thrown into chaos.

"I shall have cause to reproach his lack of gallantry. Since he fails in his gentlemanly duty, then allow me to offer myself as substitute."

He extended his elbow. In my confusion, I accepted his invitation, laying my hand timidly on his forearm.

"Before he left me, he spoke of a ring he meant to give you. May I see it?"

My fingers curled in their gloves, digging into his coat sleeve.

"Oh…I don't know…it is meant to be a surprise…secret…"

As I floundered, he pursued the agonising theme.

"He gave me to understand that you would be naming a day. So when is the happy occasion to be?"

"It is…June, the last week of June."

I almost screamed as Jasper's free hand descended, quite suddenly, on to my captive fingers, holding them down on his forearm. It was almost a slap, but with its impact dulled by the gloves we both wore.

"Answer me again, Miss Bud, and this time perhaps you might tell me the truth."

Petrified and yet also riotously exhilarated, I stared ahead, only able to move because he drew me forward with each footfall. _He knew._ The shadow behind the rood screen. It had been him.

"Eddy did not want to tell you," I said dully. "He wanted to wait until after Christmas."

I tried to pull my hand out of his but he held it fast. When I looked at him, he had this strange fixed smile on his face, as if he wanted me to feel reassured but didn't quite know how to achieve this. It didn't fit with the iron grip on my fingers or his rigid stance.

"You think I will be disappointed? _You? _Think I will be disappointed?"

I held his eyes mutely, cowed by the fire in them.

"How can I be disappointed, Rosebud, knowing why you have done this? Knowing that you feel as I do?"

His head bent close to mine. I trembled in his grasp. This could not be…this was not what I had planned…I looked around wildly, searching for another soul who might pass by and rescue me.

"Mr Jasper, no. No. You misunderstand my intention."

"No, I understand, Rosebud, I understand, my love. Ned's feelings must be taken into consideration. His heart will need some time to heal. But it will heal. It will heal quickly, because he is young and strong and personable, and there will be other young ladies, you may count on it. But while he is in Cloisterham, nothing will be said and your reputation will be protected. He will forget you, Rosebud, because he is not the man for you. You know – I thank God for it – _you_ know who that man is."

Jasper's voice, a passionate rasp, surged into my head and echoed there, filling every available space.

How on earth was I to respond to this? No inner resource came to my aid, no clever evasion or buried reserve of strength.

Instead I plucked compulsively at the ribbon of my bonnet.

"I think…you misunderstand me…" I repeated weakly.

"Misunderstand you?"

We had walked on, a way from the Close, and stood in a narrow lane, bordered on both sides by high hedges. Nobody was in sight.

"Misunderstand that flush of your cheek, that tremor in your voice, that pretty heaving of your breast when I look at you? O, I think not, Rosebud. I think you cannot deny it…"

He put a hand to my neck and slid its gloved fingers into my downy-soft hairs, finding the spot beneath my ear that…

"Can you?"

I could no longer rely on my knees, or my feet, which seemed to have no will of their own.

I swallowed. I was on a precipice. I was facing my doom.

My fidgeting fingers accidentally pulled my bonnet laces undone. The bonnet was lifted straightway by the wind and flew from me along the path towards the Nuns' House.

"Oh!"

The moment was undone just as effectively as my hat strings. We chased it along the gravel until it skidded on to the Nuns' House lawn. By the time we caught up with it, we were in plain view of the windows. I was free and clear.

I picked it up and hugged it to my chest.

"Good afternoon, Mr Jasper," I managed to blurt, looking pointedly at the house.

He bowed, holding my eyes, swallowing.

"I will call on you," he said.

I watched him stride hugely across the greensward, the tails of his coat flapping behind him.

What was I to do?

I ran to the house, up the stairs, throwing myself on to the bed, every breath painfully dredged from the very depths of me until Helena came and held my hand.

Once I could speak, she asked me, "Rosa, what has happened?"

"I have broken my engagement," I replied.

But I did not speak of what had followed. I dared not speak of that.

**Bloody hell, that was a long chapter! Just had to get the canon stuff out of the way in one go. I don't think any turf accountants will be accepting bets on Rosa keeping out of Jasper's clutches for long, do you?**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"Wake up, little one. It's Christmas Day."

For a delirious, sleep-sweet moment, I thought that John Jasper awoke me, that the hand on my brow was his.

"O, Helena, it is no more than an hour since I fell asleep." I sat up and tried to shake the fog from my head, but it persisted.

"You have done a courageous thing. You have done the right thing. It is natural to feel exhausted, but soon that weight lifted from your shoulders will lighten you instead. Here. Happy Christmas."

She handed me a gift wrapped in tissue paper.

"Oh! You are too kind. Wait a moment – I have something for you." I opened my bedside drawer and rummaged until I found a little cloth bag I had embroidered myself. "In here."

We opened our gifts together – mine was the comb I had been admiring in the haberdashery window for weeks. I gave her a set of ribbons.

Putting the present in the drawer, I pulled out the cuff links I had bought for Eddy.

"I don't suppose Eddy will be treasuring these," I remarked, rattling the package with a sigh.

"You are still friends, Rosa. He will recover from his disappointment."

"I suppose you are right."

She removed her clothes from the wardrobe.

"Does Jasper know?"

I hugged my knees. That same vision came to mind that had haunted my night. Jasper, in the lane, his hand on my neck, his face leaning closer. He would have kissed me. I would have let him.

But I mustn't let him! It was all impossible.

As I had lain awake, trying to stem the tortured flow of half-thoughts and aghast realisations, I had almost convinced myself to slip out of the house and find Eddy, to tell him what manner of man his wonderful Uncle Jack truly was. He deserved to know…and yet I held back, too afraid to act.

Jasper thought I had broken my engagement for him. And he thought I loved him, as he loved me. I had given him grounds to think so! How had I done this? When had it happened?

I cast my mind over every meeting, every music lesson, every conversational exchange. Was it really so obvious? If so, had anybody else noticed?

Even as my mind told me to avoid Jasper, to state in plain terms that he stood no chance with me, my heart rebelled against its advice. He compelled me towards him – I had no idea how, but he exerted a mysterious power over me. For as long as he was near, I would be under his sway. He forced me to be a woman, to be desired as a woman. I wanted to fight it, but I hadn't the strength or the will.

It was almost enough to send me crying back to Eddy, pleading to re-establish the engagement. Almost. Not quite.

Helena raised an eyebrow at my silence, holding a plaid dress up against her.

"Rosa?"

I started out of my contemplations.

"Oh – Eddy did not want to tell him. I believe he was going to wait until tomorrow."

"Be careful. Now you are free, he may declare himself to you. Try not to be alone with him."

"I will."

I would. For the preservation of my apparently disappearing self-control and decency, if nothing else. To think that I had almost allowed myself to be kissed by the uncle of my fiancé, minutes after breaking our compact. I felt like a character in a French novel, seedy and unclean.

As we made our way down the stairs for breakfast, there was a knock at the door. I stood stock-still, clutching Helena's arm, hearing Jasper's voice in the entry.

"Miss Twinkleton, I am very sorry to inconvenience you, but I am afraid our plans for Christmas lunch at the gatehouse will have to be rearranged."

"Oh, Mr Jasper, is anything wrong? Rosa and I were so looking forward to the pleasure of your company. And young Mr Drood's, of course."

"Young Mr Drood has been called away, to London. He will not be returning for the foreseeable future."

"Oh dear! Good heavens! Poor Rosa will be distraught."

"I hope this goose, which I intended to have cooked for us, will go some way to alleviating your distress. Please – take it."

We heard a rustling of paper.

"Well, you are very kind. But what shall you do?"

"I shall perhaps attach myself to the Crisparkles, or make do with a solitary feast at the gatehouse."

"Oh no, that will never do! Please, I pray you, join us here. We are dull company for a young man, I fear, but we would be so very honoured to have you."

"That is…thank you, Miss Twinkleton, but…"

"I insist!"

"Well, the insistence of a lady puts a different complexion on things. In that case, I shall be delighted to join you."

"_No_," I whispered, panic-stricken.

Helena patted my hand. "You won't be alone with him," she whispered back. "Miss Twinkleton won't take her eye off him for a minute."

I sniggered. "That much is true."

"Come and find us after the cathedral service," said Miss Twinkleton. "I'll go and find Jessy and tell her she needs to do more than boil that Boxing Day ham."

I wanted to run down the stairs and demand that Jasper tell me what had happened to Edwin, but he left before I was at the first floor landing.

At the cathedral Christmas service, I half-expected God to strike me down for the volume of less-than-Christian thoughts that crowded in on me. The celestial music floating down from the choir, conducted with unusual gusto by John Jasper, seemed chosen for me, its chords containing messages of passion that owed more to the profane than the sacred.

When he wasn't conducting, his eye sought me out. I stared at the prayer book, my body consumed with an urge to shiver. Darkness was upon me. My own flesh led me to destruction.

When the service was ended, Helena left with the Crisparkles while I had to huddle with the Misses in the church porch, exchanging festive pleasantries with all and sundry, waiting for Jasper.

When he appeared through the door, I ended my dull conversation with the mayor mid-sentence and demanded, "Whatever happened to Eddy? Why did he leave? Did he leave a note for me?"

"Ah, impetuous young hearts," I heard Miss Twinkleton say to Mayor Sapsea, which made me stamp my foot for emphasis.

Jasper held up his hands, smiling with a fond indulgence that made me want to run far, far away.

"Alas, he did not think to explain himself to me. I found the most cursory of notes when I returned home from Midnight Mass, telling me that he had gone to London and would not be back again this year. I rather hoped _you_ may be able to provide an explanation…"

He raised an eyebrow at me, then looked around at the assembled company, all of whom hung on our every word.

"Me?" I hesitated. He wanted me to tell everyone I'd broken the engagement. "No."

"Then I know as much about it as you do, Miss Bud."

He offered me his arm. There was little choice but to take it.

"These boys are such hotheads," sighed Miss Twinkleton, descending the steps in front of us. "Console yourself, Rosa – he will return, full of apologies, when he knows how he has upset you. I don't suppose it occurred to him for a minute that he might be missed."

As soon as she and Miss Tisher were safely out of earshot, Jasper leant his head towards mine and spoke in a low voice.

"You have not told anyone?"

"No. They would talk about nothing else."

"They will soon tire of it. I think you should tell them. Or, if not, I will."

"You will not!" I hissed. "It is not for you to say."

He helped me over a stray slate, blown from a roof by last night's gale.

"The sooner the tongues of Cloisterham start to wag, the sooner they will cease." He gave me a look laden with dark intent. "And then we may proceed."

"Proceed?"

Dropping his voice yet lower, he said, "To establish our future – yours and mine."

My mouth was parched as dust, yet I managed to whisper out more words.

"You presume a good deal, yet I do not see how it can be…"

"I cannot _presume_ when something has been shown to me, plain as day. I know with certainty that you hold a regard for me that you never held for Ned. You could not deny it yesterday, and you will not deny it now. As for your not being able to see how it can be, well, have no anxieties on that score. I see it all and my vision will suffice for us both."

"You _do_ presume, Sir," I said, as fiercely as I could muster.

He smiled.

"O, all that spirit, all that passion. And it shall be all mine."

It seemed futile to argue with him, when he relished it so. I began to see that my eventual surrender was inevitable. I even wished for it. Yet I hated my treacherous wishes just as much as I longed to yield to them.

"These are not the words of a gentleman."

He merely shook his head and smiled all the more, placing his lips so close to my ear that I flinched, fearing discovery by the Misses at any minute.

"It shall be," he repeated in a whisper. "I have waited long enough."

With an air of unruffled suavity, he caught us up with the Misses and we joined in their oohing and aahing at all the storm damage until we arrived at the Nuns' House.

Ensconced in the drawing room with a good fire and a glass of punch, the Misses prevailed on Jasper to provide carols around the piano, into which I joined with little enthusiasm, withdrawing halfway through to stare out of the window. Branches and tree limbs were strewn over the lawn – even my surroundings betokened catastrophe.

"Poor Rosa," said Miss Tisher loudly after Jasper had enchanted them with a rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. "Looking for young Mr Drood. What a shame."

I bit my lip, regretting the raising of the subject, and turned to face them.

"It seems so hard that he would leave without a word."

"But he did leave something," said Jasper, rising from the piano and reaching inside his waistcoat pocket. "Here." He produced a box, carefully wrapped and ribboned, and proffered it.

"A Christmas gift?"

I approached carefully and took the box from him. Inside it lay a silver locket, exquisitely engraved, on a chain. It was perfect, simple and tasteful – in other words, it was not Edwin's choice of gift. His sensibilities tended towards the lavish and ostentatious, but there were no inlaid jewels or excessive ornamentation.

I looked up at Jasper.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

_It was from him._

"It's…beautiful."

"And is there a picture of Mr Drood in it?" Miss Twinkleton was avid to know.

"No," said Jasper, then he cleared his throat, realising his faux pas. "I don't know," he amended.

I sprung the catch with a fingernail. It was empty.

"Not yet," I said, showing everyone the blank oval halves.

"Put it on," said Jasper. "Here, let me help you."

I tried to fasten it as quickly as I could before he reached me, but he removed my fumbling fingers from the back of my neck and replaced them with his, sure and skilled. His knuckles rested against my nape for longer than necessary, burning their impression into my skin.

"There," he whispered, his breath drifting down, tickling my hairs. "Lovely."

I felt the chain and the locket against my skin like I might feel a fetter around my neck. They hung there, ten times heavier than they truly were, Jasper's mark upon me, his diabolical version of a betrothal ring.

"So pretty!" said Miss Tisher, clapping her hands, and then Jessy came in to say the goose was ready to carve and Jasper took my arm to accompany me to the dining room.

"Young Mr Drood may have gone some way to redeeming himself then?" said Miss Twinkleton, admiring my locket while Jasper stood at the head of the table, sharpening the carving knife.

The sight of him, striking the blade against the grindstone with muscular and rhythmic force, was weakeningly magnetic. I could not somehow remove my eyes from his arms as they worked. Those arms. How they would hold one. They could lift me without an ounce of strain.

"It is very pretty," I said faintly.

"And to think," squawked Miss Tisher, "that next Christmas you will be eating your own bird in your own home, a married lady – Mrs Drood!"

Jasper gave the knife one final vigorous sweep of friction before examining the blade with a half-closed eye. It glinted beneath the gaslight.

I would never be Mrs Drood. And goodness knew where I would be next Christmas.

"How do you think you shall like that, Miss Bud?" asked Jasper, looking up slyly as he carved meat from the bones.

"I cannot say. I have no knowledge of it."

"Have you never thought of marriage, Mr Jasper?" asked Miss Twinkleton archly.

He paused in his carving, smiling enigmatically.

"A poor choirmaster like me can afford thought, but little else besides," he said.

"O, I am sure your living is more comfortable than most," protested Miss Tisher. "And if times are hard, you can always teach. I am sure you could support a wife."

"I think he prevaricates," said Miss Twinkleton. "I hope there is not a broken heart in your past, Mr Jasper? If so, please be assured that we women are not all false or perfidious."

_Like me._

"What a notion," said Jasper, maintaining a light tone, though his eyes flickered between me and the Misses with increasing rapidity. "No, no-one has broken my heart."

"Then you have simply never given it?" said Miss Tisher with a sigh.

He smiled for a fraction too long, the pause growing awkward.

"Here," he said, putting the plate of meat in the centre of the table. "All may serve themselves."

I had no desire to eat, seated beside him as I was. When I reached for the dish of potatoes, his arm crossed mine and I leapt back into my seat, knocking my fork on to the floor. We both ducked down to retrieve it at the same time, our foreheads bumping together under the table. He put his hand on my cheek. I stabbed him in the leg with the fork – not hard, of course, but hard enough to act as a warning.

It didn't seem to work, though, for minutes later his foot nudged against mine, the edge of his boot rubbing along my satin slipper. I withdrew it.

"What would you offer a wife, Mr Jasper?" I said suddenly, the words coming from nowhere.

The Misses put down their cutlery and leant forward, waiting for his reply.

I wanted to recall the question, retract it from the air, where it hung like a malevolent cloud.

He turned his face to me and I wanted to cover my eyes. I should never have asked.

"I have little in the way of material possessions to offer," he said. "I collect a modest stipend which is enough to cover my living expenses and keep me in sheet music. I have a residence, provided by the diocese. I have steady employment."

"These things we know," I interrupted. Rudely, I supposed. "I do not ask about money. Money is unimportant."

"If only it were," he riposted. "Well, I shall attempt an answer. I would offer absolute fidelity. Undivided attention and affection. Unshakeable devotion to her comfort and security. I would protect her from the vicissitudes of the world and keep her always in my highest esteem. She would never feel less than utterly and wholeheartedly loved."

I could hear nothing but the beating of my own heart. The Misses had been struck swooningly dumb by this recitation. I felt tears gather at the back of my eyes.

"She will be a most fortunate woman," said Miss Twinkleton at last.

"Most fortunate indeed," echoed Miss Tisher.

After dinner, while the Misses sat gluttonously replete on the sofas, Jasper engaged me in a game of chess. We sat on either side of the small card table, in front of the fire, watched by two pairs of glazed, wrinkled eyes.

The logs crackled and hissed, and the hypnotic sound, coupled with the room's seductive warmth, eventually sent the Misses drifting into open-mouthed sleep.

Jasper took another of my pawns, then, after a sidelong glance at the sofas, he reached out for my locket. My capacity for movement, speech, breath all fled as he weighed the silver oval in his fingers.

"You bought this," I whispered, feeling a tug on the chain, tightening at the back of my neck.

"It suits you. You should wear it always."

"It is wrong. What you are doing is wrong."

He moved his hand so that his knuckles grazed my neck, stroking up the curve of my chin. He leant over the chessboard.

"No, Rosa, it is not wrong," he said. "You are meant for me. The heavens ordain it."

"Then I must argue with the heavens…"

I could say no more. He was so near. His hand came to rest upon my neck. I could have exclaimed or knocked the chess pieces on to his lap or kicked out at him, but I did none of these things. Instead I let him draw me forward until my lips met his and we were kissing.

O, we were kissing.

It could not be right that one word described both Edwin's dry pecks and…this. This was another order of things entirely. There should be another word for it, a word that would encapsulate the fervour, the illumination of the senses, the divine rapture, the addictive sweetness of it all. When Jasper kissed me, I felt his soul touch mine, and I understood how he could be so confident in his assertion that I should be his. He was right. I should be. I was.

I shut my eyes and let myself be transported, giving myself to him in willing surrender. I had no thought beyond wanting this to last forever, to make the natural condition of my life the state of being kissed by John Jasper.

The fire roared in my ears and I felt a heat of my own, equal to any that the coal gave out, burgeoning in my belly and spreading outwards. Oh, but his lips tasted so intoxicating, and they pressed themselves on mine with such tender authority. I was fatally weak and now I would pay the price for it.

"Miss Twinkleton, there is – oh!"

Jessy's scream roused the Misses from their sleep and caused Jasper and I to spring apart as if wounded.

"Whatever is the matter?" A confused Miss Twinkleton struggled to her feet.

I aimed one guilty, horrified look at Jessy and buried my face in my hands. For she was not alone. Standing beside her, gripping his walking stick as if he might collapse without it, was Neville Landless.

"Mr Landless…" Jasper spoke, his voice betraying a struggle to maintain calm.

"Do not speak!" yelled Landless. "Step away from her! Step away from her or I'll…"

"Put the cudgel down," said Jasper, finding once more that note of natural authority in his voice.

"Mr Landless, for shame!" Miss Twinkleton's skirts swished near me. I still didn't dare look up. "Please, put down that…weapon, and explain yourself."

He must have dropped the stick, for it fell with a clatter to the floor.

"While you slept, Miss Twinkleton, this villain laid his hands on that innocent, beautiful girl. This girl who is attached to another! He seduced her under your very nose!"

"I am at a loss to understand what you are saying. Mr Jasper…Rosa…what on earth does he mean?"

I stood, intending to leave the room with all possible haste, but Jasper caught me by the arm, obviating my escape.

"No, Rosa, it is best we answer these charges, openly and honestly. Yes, Miss Twinkleton, there exists an understanding between Miss Bud and I. I regret its premature exposure in this manner, but I do not regret my actions."

Miss Twinkleton clasped her hands to her breast, appalled.

"An understanding? How can there possibly be any understanding between you when young Mr Drood…?"

"Tell her, Rosa," Jasper prompted me, squeezing my arm.

Neville Landless looked as if he had murder on his mind, fists clenched, eyes like hard beads of jet.

"I called off our engagement," I told them. "I suppose that is why he went to London. He did not want to see me any more."

"You called off your engagement?" Miss Twinkleton seemed capable of little more than repetition of other people's statements. "You have thrown that poor boy over for a common singing master? His heart must be broken."

"You impugn her reputation," said Jasper dangerously. "I will not hear her spoken of so. She did not throw him over for me. I bear all the responsibility for our alliance, the pursuit was from my quarter entirely. You must not blame her."

"No, you thought to bag yourself an orphaned heiress, didn't you? You are a fortune hunter and a rogue, Sir. You will leave my house and you may be quite sure there will be no more music lessons."

Jasper stood his ground for a few moments until Neville advanced a step, then he released my arm and, without a word, strode out of the room.

I made after him.

"Oh, do not follow him!" lamented Miss Tisher.

"Mr Jasper!" I called as he collected his coat from the hallway.

"This is not the end of us, Rosa, it is merely the beginning," he said, putting it on. "And I think you might call me John now, don't you?"

"Not Jack?"

"No, that is _his_ name for me."

"I am sorry about Miss Twinkleton."

"She has had a shock. It's understandable. She will come round." He took up my hands, holding them tightly. "They all will come round, in time. Take heart, my love."

"I am thrown into such confusion. I hardly know what I should do."

"We should pay a visit to your guardian."

"Mr Grewgious?"

"We will need his permission to marry."

"To…marry?"

"What did you think my intentions were, Rosebud? Of course, to marry."

My poor head was spinning. Miss Twinkleton appeared.

"Rosa, come back here this minute! Come away from that dreadful man."

He ducked forward and kissed my cheek before putting on his hat and scarf, preparatory to leaving.

"Have courage," he whispered. "We shall find a way."

Once the door banged behind him, I pushed past Miss Twinkleton and up the stairs, barricading myself in my room where I lay on the bed, weeping until I could weep no more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

My head ached and I was in sore need of a glass of water, but I had no intention of leaving my room.

Misses Twinkleton and Tisher had made numerous overtures. They didn't condone my behaviour but they were willing to forgive and forget if I would just undertake to keep away from Mr Jasper.

"The man has overwhelmed you with his attentions so that you hardly know what you are doing," Twinkleton deigned to read my mind for me. "You poor thing. You allowed yourself to be tempted, but God will forgive you your little youthful indiscretion. He won't forgive you if you persist with it, though. And neither will I."

Later on, she tried to persuade me to come out, saying that we had all been invited to spend the evening with the Crisparkles – this had been the purpose of Mr Landless's visit. I had no desire to face a crowd of people who had, no doubt, been regaled with the tale of my scarlet womanhood by Neville, so this did not have the desired effect either.

It had been dark for some hours before I finally relented, opening the door to admit Helena. She brought with her a water jug and a cheese plate and set them down silently before seating herself beside me. I did not look at her but stared, sore-eyed and heavy-headed, down at my lap.

"Neville has told me about Mr Jasper," she said quietly. "How has this come about? Did he force you?"

"No. Only by dint of his persistence and his unbending will. There was no force involved."

"You want him?"

"O, Helena, do you think me very terrible?"

"I could never find you terrible. But I struggle to understand this. Only this morning, you shuddered in dread of spending time with him. And now, you accept him as your lover."

"My dread was, in large measure, a fear of the feelings I held in my heart for him. I recognise that now."

"And Edwin…?"

"I could never love Edwin, not in the way…"

"You love Jasper?"

"I believe…I might. All that revulsion and loathing was my mind twisting feelings that were too strong to face, making them something safer."

"How does it feel? This love?"

"It feels…dangerous."

"I am not sure I like the sound of it."

"I feel as if a dark current has dragged me underneath the tide and I will never again be free. I am his, Helena. I cannot change that. He has taken possession of me as surely as if he bound me to him with chains."

"This is not healthy, Rosa. Where is the joy in it?"

"Oh, there is joy in it. Such deep joy. When he kissed me, I thought I should die of it."

"He has enslaved you."

"Willingly."

"But is it? Truly? This has been such a time of upheaval for you. How can you know your mind? Do you not think you should take some time to reflect?"

"You do not approve. Nobody does. But there is no other fate for me than to be his. Please be my friend. Please take my part."

"I am always your friend. I cannot claim to think that Mr Jasper is a suitable man for you, but if he makes you happy…"

"He said he would ensure that I never felt less than utterly and wholeheartedly loved. Does that sound like a bad man to you?"

"No." She smiled. "No, it does not. Will you eat something, darling? You are so pale."

I picked at the cheese plate.

"He means to marry me," I said.

"At least his intentions are honourable, if his behaviour is not. What will Edwin think?"

"Oh, he will understand, in time. He will love again, somebody better suited to him."

"His own uncle, though. If you do marry him, there will be a scandal."

"Cloisterham is such a silly place."

"I just want you to think carefully about this, that is all. Jasper is too absorbed in his passion for you to see clearly. This will harm his reputation."

I thought about this.

"Perhaps we should wait."

"He won't like that."

"Neither will I. Now that I have found my true feelings for him, I could burst with them. They are so strong, so consuming, they almost frighten me."

"Come downstairs, Rosa. Make your peace with Miss Twinkleton. And stay away from Jasper, at least for a few days. You both need time alone. Time to think."

Staying away from Jasper proved an impossible task, for I thought of him every minute of the day. He was forbidden to cross the Nuns' House threshold, but I looked for him all the same, my forlorn gaze crossing the lawns to the iron snow-filled skies beyond.

My body felt different to me, alive with new sensations, and I was conscious always of the way the locket lay at the hollow of my collarbone, its smooth silver surface warmed by my skin. It was like having a piece of him pressed to me, always.

Suddenly all my fears had become desires and sometimes they swept over me with such incessant force that I had to sit down and catch a breath.

Miss Twinkleton made dark comments about protecting my virtue and not allowing me out of the house, but she could hardly keep me imprisoned indefinitely and, on one afternoon, two days after Christmas, I walked with Helena out to the town and back.

"I hope you are not intending to call on Mr Jasper," she said. "It would not be proper."

"I know that. I have come out to take the air."

"It's very cold air," said Helena, shivering. "And there will be snow."

We drew close to Jasper's gatehouse. My chest constricted and my heart began to hammer. He was probably not even in there, but the hope that I might catch sight of him, perhaps exchange a few words, took hold of me.

We were in the arch when his door opened and he burst out in front of us, short of breath, clutching a ribbon-tied scroll.

"Oh," I said, fearfully delighted to have his face and form before me again. "It is you."

"Miss Twinkleton has forbidden us to speak to you," Helena told him.

"Forbidden you to speak to me? Well, that is unfortunate. Then I must do the talking. Rosa, take this and sign your name to it, then take it to the Post Office and send it first class to Mr Grewgious."

He handed me the scroll.

"What is it?"

"You defy Miss Twinkleton? That is good." He smiled, a caress in his eyes, making me blush. "It is simply a plea to your guardian to visit you here as soon as possible to discuss a matter of a personal and delicate nature."

"What matter?" asked Helena.

"Dear me, Miss Twinkleton really hasn't made an impression on you, has she?" tutted Jasper. "It's none of your business, Miss Landless, but as Rosa's guardian, Mr Grewgious must give his consent before she can marry."

"Do you not think such a serious step as marriage requires a little longer acquaintance? You can't kiss a girl one day and marry her the next."

"Miss Landless, we are as well acquainted as we need to be."

"Nobody has proposed to me yet," I pointed out, rather miffed.

"Then that must be remedied," said Jasper, taking my hand and leading me to a grassy area at the side of the path.

The first flakes of snow were dropping from the sky as Jasper dropped to one knee, still clasping my hands in his. Helena stood by the path, keeping watch and sighing impatiently.

He turned his face up to mine. Snowflakes settled and melted on his eyelashes.

"Miss Rosa Bud," he said, "will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?"

For a moment, I did not know how to answer. Marriage – it seemed so formal, so grown-up, a world away from me and my sheltered, untroubled life. It was a solemn compact. If I said yes, then my life and his were linked forever.

But if I said no, I could never again kiss him.

So I said yes.

The succeeding days passed in a ferment of frustration and yearning. I saw Jasper only fleetingly, in church or in passing, and I was always accompanied. Reverend Crisparkle called to tell me with immense gravity that any liaison between Jasper and I would probably end his career as choirmaster.

"But why should it?" I asked him. "Why should we give in to gossipping and spiteful tittle-tattle?"

"Everyone in Cloisterham knows you were engaged to Edwin – most think you still are. And Jasper is his _uncle_. Think of it, Miss Bud."

"I do, and I still find it trivial and silly."

"If you wish to destroy his career and your reputation, then I cannot stop you. But I hope you will be sensible. Good day."

My next visitor was Mr Grewgious.

Miss Twinkleton had not been expecting him and she was out visiting, so Miss Tisher had to sit with us as chaperone. It would not be easy to talk to him with her in the room, but I weathered the polite formalities and then plucked up my courage.

"This delicate matter of which you wrote," opened Mr Grewgious.

Immediately Miss Tisher's sharp eyes darted to me.

"Yes."

"I was rather expecting to hear that your engagement to Mr Drood was at an end. Does it pertain to that?"

"You are correct in thinking that I have broken off our nuptial agreement," I said. "But there is more to it than that. I would like your permission…to marry."

His jaw dropped and Miss Tisher's teacup landed in the saucer, slopping tea over the rim.

"Excuse me," he said, frowning. "Am I to understand that you have formed an attachment to another man? Is this why you no longer wished to honour your commitment to Mr Drood?"

"It is…not really. That is, I never loved Eddy in that way. But I do love this person in that way. And I should like to marry him. With your permission."

"Who is this fellow?"

"Is that germane?" I didn't really want to name Jasper.

"My dear, I am your guardian. You are telling me you want to get married. The identity of your chosen groom is, of course, a matter of exceptional interest to me, whether he is known to me or not. What is his name?"

"His name…is Jasper."

Grewgious put down his teacup.

"Surely not…"

"Edwin's uncle, yes."

"My dear, how has he taken your sweet, girlish heart and…stolen it? That man, that…Jasper. This is beyond my comprehension."

"He was caught with his monstrous hands upon her in this very room, Christmas Day," Miss Tisher broke in. "The man's a devil. Heaven knows how he's got her in his clutches, for we've forbidden him to enter the house, but she can't seem to get away from him. It's not right. Unseemly. Poor Mr Drood's own uncle."

"Quite," said Mr Grewgious.

"But I love him," I pleaded. "And he loves me."

"If he loves you as he claims, then he can wait four years for you. I'm afraid I cannot give my consent to this match. Your poor father…no."

"Oh, Mr Grewgious! Four years! It is too long."

"You need time enough, Miss Bud, to let your heart and mind mature. This is some youthful infatuation that will pass and disperse on the breeze. You will look back and see that you had a lucky escape. You may not see it now, but this is the kindest thing I can do for you."

"But you would have let me marry Eddy! And I didn't even love him, except as a sister might love a brother."

"That longstanding arrangement was mentioned in your father's will, Miss Bud. This new and entirely unsuitable liaison was not."

"Why is it unsuitable?"

"What do you know of this man?"

"He is Edwin's mother's brother. And he is the cathedral choirmaster. He is highly respected in the town."

"Not for long," muttered Mr Grewgious, aside. "But these are things that all may know. What do you actually _know_ of him?"

For a horrible moment, Eddy's tale of his laudanum addiction shadowed my mind. I hoped whatever problem he had with his health was not serious.

"I know I want to marry him," I said, thrusting out my chin. "And if you refuse, it shall simply make me all the more determined to do so."

Grewgious shook his head. "Spoken like a true seventeen year old," he said. "Forgive me, Miss Bud, but I cannot consent to this. Not now. Not yet."

I stood up, needing to make some kind of grand gesture or declaration, but not knowing quite what it should be.

I settled on sweeping from the room, grabbing my cloak, gloves and bonnet and running through the snow to Jasper.

I slipped and slid along the cobbles, almost falling several times, until I reached the gatehouse and pelted up the stairs, hammering on the door with my fist.

When he opened it, in his shirtsleeves with a bleary look on his face as if I had woken him from sleep, I threw myself upon him.

"Rosa, Rosa, Rosa," he soothed, shutting the door with one hand and holding me against him with the other. "Whatever is the matter?"

"We are to wait four years," I told him. "Grewgious will not give consent."

Jasper's face, which had been fondly exasperated, darkened.

"On what grounds does he refuse?"

"That you are Edwin's uncle. And that he does not care for you. There appears to be no more substance to it than that."

"I shall speak to him."

"Oh, don't. It will make no difference. He has set his face against you."

"I shall speak to him. Hush, all will be well. Don't take on so. Sit down. I have tea in the pot."

He sat me in his one armchair and placed a rug over my knees. I was shivering with cold, although I hadn't realised it until he made efforts to warm me.

"Who knows that you are here?" he asked, in a scolding manner, pouring the tea.

"Nobody. Although they may guess…"

"Rosebud, if you are looking for a way to destroy your reputation, you have hit on a very good one. If you should be seen here, Cloisterham will be afire with it by tomorrow."

"All this talk of reputation. I do not care about it."

"You should."

"You fear for your own?"

"My position in this town depends on maintaining a particular level of moral probity. Having said that, my position in this town is unimportant to me. I have often wished to leave."

"I did not know that."

He smiled, seating himself in the wooden chair on the opposite side of the fire, sipping at his tea.

"This," he waved his hand around the dark room, "is no place to bring a wife. I have thoughts of going to London, once we are married, and finding a position there."

"Once we are married. Four years. Mere days ago I would have shunned the prospect – now I cannot bear for it to be so long postponed."

He heaved a sigh.

"Rosebud, this is my fault. I have failed you. This was not my vision for us. I had in mind a period of discreet and leisurely courtship until Cloisterham had forgotten about your connection to Edwin. I could have waited six months. I cannot wait four years."

"It is too long."

"I must speak to Grewgious."

"He will not change his mind."

"He may."

As if our conversation had summoned him, his voice drifted suddenly up the stairs.

"Jasper! Are you in?"

He rose swiftly, pulling me out of the chair and propelling me to an interior door, which he opened and pushed me through. I was in Jasper's bedchamber.

I stood with my back to the closed door, listening.

"Mr Grewgious. To what do I owe this visit?"

"You know fine well, Sir."

I looked about the room; it was sparse and lacking in comforts. On the bedside table stood a row of empty brown bottles. The labels read 'Laudanum'. Perhaps Grewgious was right. Perhaps I hardly knew him after all.

"You wish to interview me on the subject of Miss Bud? Tea?"

"No, thank you. And yes, of course she is my reason for visiting you. Is she here? What have you done with her?"

"I have done nothing with her."

"That's hardly true, is it, Mr Jasper. You have done a great deal. You have taken that innocent girl – seventeen years old – and somehow…"

"Rosa knows her own mind. And her own heart."

"You have made advances to her that should never have been made. The girl has only just broken her engagement to your nephew. Was that at your behest?"

"No, it was not."

"Humph. Then how has this come about with such rapidity? Surely you must have lured her away from him while the engagement still stood."

"She revealed her true feelings to me the day after she broke it. All is decent and above-board, Mr Grewgious, though it is fair to say that we were both guilty of harbouring an unannounced attachment to each other some time before she broke with Edwin. However, we both fought it, until the struggle became too much."

"You did not fight it. You brought her under your influence until she was compelled to submit to you. You have acted unspeakably. Christmas Day at the Nuns' House…what possessed you?"

"Mr Grewgious, nothing more has possessed either of us than love. It is simply that. And I will marry her, with your consent or without it."

"A four year wait will test your resolve, no doubt. And hers. I've a mind to remove her from the Nuns' House and bring her to stay with me in London."

"Neither distance nor time will have the slightest effect on our hearts, Mr Grewgious, you may be quite sure of it. Do what you will – I will have her."

"You are a blackguard, Sir."

"No, I am a man who knows what he wants. _You_, I perceive, have some other wish for her, and her own desires have little bearing on the case if they go against it. You are her guardian – should you not listen to her, and go about helping her fulfil her hopes for her future?"

"Not when they are so…warped…as this."

"If you set your face against our union, you will lose her. Lose her goodwill and her affection. Her parents would have wanted her to be happy!"

"Yes." Grewgious whispered this so I had to press my ear to the door. "They would. This is why I can never give my consent to this match, Mr Jasper. I do not think you can make her happy. She is all lightness and sweetness, a pure and natural creature, whereas you…"

"You barely know me, Sir. I would advise you to speak no further for fear of embarrassing yourself."

I could not take my eyes off Jasper's bed. He lay in there, night after night, his head on that pillow, his unclothed body beneath the sheets. And, if he had his way, I would lie there with him.

The thought made me shut my eyes, overwhelming me. I wanted to slide my back down the door and land on the floor, legs out before me like a rag doll. But if I did that, Grewgious would hear me and the game would be up.

"Well, there is no more to be said," my guardian sighed. "Miss Twinkleton has been left with strict instructions to bring Rosa to London the minute you are seen with her again. I will do what I can to release her from your influence."

"You will fail. Nothing and nobody will keep me from her."

"Good day, Sir. If she comes here – as I suspect she will – I beg you to consider her reputation and send her away."

"Good day, Mr Grewgious."

I heard the door bang and I let my legs give way, landing with a bump on the bare varnished floorboards of Jasper's room, burying my face between my knees.

An egregious stalemate had been reached. I could not marry him. I could not even see him without getting packed off to London.

Jasper opened the door and almost tripped over me.

"Rosa, what are you doing down there?"

"This room is cold."

There was no fire in the grate and my fingers and toes were partially numb.

"Come to the fire." He pulled me up by my elbow, but instead of letting me sit in the armchair he sat in it himself, then brought me to perch upon his lap. He was surprisingly comfortable. Better than a thousand cushions. I put my arms around his neck, wondering if I would ever get the opportunity to be so close to him again.

"We are left with little choice," he said. I rested my head against his shoulder and he raised a hand, untangling my curls with his fingers in a manner that both soothed and aroused an excitation of desire.

"I cannot bear to leave you," I said. "For four years."

He lowered his face closer to mine. I hoped he was going to kiss me, but he rubbed his nose against mine, speaking in a whisper.

"Come away with me, Rosebud."

I drew in a sharp breath, my eyes wide.

"Mr Jasper! You mean…?"

"We can travel to Scotland. There, you have no need of anyone's permission to marry. As long as you are over sixteen and can find two witnesses from the street…"

"Elope!"

"It may seem a desperate remedy, but what other solution can you see?"

I thought of Miss Twinkleton, Helena, Mr Grewgious – all their horrified faces. Then I settled deeper in Jasper's arms and considered having to turn my back on this blissful togetherness.

"What of your choir? Won't you lose your place?"

"They will take a holiday after Epiphany anyway. I have a week to spare."

"And you will leave Cloisterham a single man and return a married one? There will be the most terrific furore."

"It is not a crime to marry. There will be some shock at first, but it will settle down. We can leave Cloisterham, when I find another place."

"Grewgious may not release my inheritance, even though it comes to me on marriage. If he does not recognise the marriage…"

"The marriage will be legally binding. I will fight him through the courts if necessary."

"You aren't what Miss Twinkleton said, are you?" I asked, suddenly chilled. "A fortune hunter?"

He tightened his hold on me.

"You are my fortune," he said. "And I have no intention of losing you."

Being wrapped in him was bliss beyond imagining; it was so difficult to feel that anything awful could ever happen while I was folded up in his arms, bundled against his chest. We were like two parts of a whole, pieces that connected.

We fell into a kiss, another kiss by the fire, but this time no table stood between us and his hands planted themselves in my hair and around my waist, anchoring me fast. My lips were eager against his and my body sought his warmth, his solidity with frantic compulsion. It was like falling, a long, long way, and I never wanted to reach the bottom. I explored his hair – he had a great deal of it – and slipped my fingers inside his collar. Then he did a most extraordinary thing – he opened my lips with the tip of his tongue and pushed it inside my mouth! At first I was too astonished to react and then, once my astonishment had faded a little, the titillating sensation of it overrode my natural repulsion and I let him continue.

This was not something I had ever thought to do, or heard tell of, but it was like having my very innermost being taken hold of and made to concentrate on nothing else but him. I was in a new realm, entirely sensual, where anything could happen. Anything could be done to me. I would consent with my body before my mind knew a thing of it.

Having opened me up like a clam shell, he then withdrew, panting a little, his eyes half-closed and cheeks aflame.

"I must stop while I still can," he whispered. "I shall go too far. You must go back, Rosebud."

"I want to stay."

"No. Not now. But soon."

He shifted in the chair, pushing me upright then standing himself. In front of the fire, he took my hands and gripped them to his chest.

"Rosa, take the second omnibus to Strood railway station on the day after Epiphany. I will meet you there. Bring a change of clothes and whatever small things you need for a week's excursion."

"We are really going to elope?"

"What is the alternative?"

My face was still wet from kissing him and my throat felt full of steam. My skin was sensitive, as if the slightest touch might melt it. If my head grew any lighter it might float away. I would, I realised, do anything for him.

"I don't know."

"There is no alternative, if we want to be together. Which we do. Yes?"

I put my fingers to his cheek; they trembled in his whiskers. He caressed me beneath my chin.

"Oh yes."

"Then we will meet at the station, eight days from now. Eight days. Better than four years, don't you think?"

I did.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

"I trust you have not been anywhere near that Mr Jasper?"

I entered the Nuns' House under the baleful eyes of the Misses.

"What would be the use?" I said, hanging up my bonnet and cloak. "You are all determined to make us miserable. There is nothing we can do."

I walked past them, into the music room, shutting the door behind me. Sitting at the piano, I thought of all the times I had been here with him beside me, not realising how our futures were destined to be linked. All the times I had shrunk from him, flinched at his fingers on mine. Now I would give anything to have him here, even if it meant playing those dreadful Czerny exercises.

I played one, silently dedicating it to him. Perhaps he too was playing his piano now. The thought cheered me and I practised on until Helena came into the room.

"Is it over between you and Jasper?"

"Until 1849," I said, looking up with a tight smile.

"Perhaps it won't be so. If, in a year, you are still insistent that you want to marry him, Mr Grewgious might change his mind. He's a reasonable man."

"He wasn't very reasonable this afternoon."

"I can see why he wouldn't want to give his consent just yet, Rosy. But let a year pass and, if you and Jasper are still of the same mind, then he will have to consider it seriously. I think he just wants to make sure it isn't a whim. And that Jasper hasn't…coerced you in some way."

"You are so level-headed, Helena. All I can think of is how desperately I want to be with him. But I can't be."

"Just wait. I promise you, the time will pass more quickly than you expect."

Yes. Eight days.

I smiled at her, more warmly this time.

"I hope you're right."

Eight days never passed so slowly. I counted every stitch of my embroidery, every note of my piano practice, every word of my novels, every step of my slow perambulations around the garden.

Once Helena and I saw him with Reverend Crisparkle on the cathedral steps.

"Do not look at him," muttered Helena, but we could not resist an exchange of smouldering glances before walking onwards.

I could scarcely sleep – I could scarcely even _think_. Was I really going to elope with John Jasper? The more I turned it over in my mind, the more it seemed like madness. If it weren't for the endless tug of need for him, nagging at me every second of the day, I'd dismiss it as some kind of dream. I went to the bedroom window while Helena slept and looked out at the snow-carpeted ground, imagining myself tiptoeing over it with my carpet bag, on my way to catch the 8.10 omnibus to Strood.

Then I imagined myself married. Mrs Jasper.

O God. It was the strangest thing. My mind would not let me see it at all.

Helena woke up.

"Get back into bed. You'll freeze!"

"Helena, what do you think it would be like, to be married?"

"I hope nothing like it was for my mother."

I turned to her. "Really? Why?" I went to sit on her bed.

"I never knew my father, but my stepfather was a violent man."

"Oh dear. He beat your mother?"

"He beat all of us. He was a man of dark moods and sudden rages. He drank a great deal. He was disappointed in life and he took it out on us."

"How terrible."

"Yes." She paused. "Your Mr Jasper reminds me of him."

"Oh, he doesn't!"

"I don't suppose he is anything like him. But his demeanour is so similar. I cannot warm to him for that reason."

"John Jasper is not a drunkard." _But he is an opium eater._

"No, I am sure it is just my stupid fancy, Rosa. But neither of us knows for sure. We don't know him well enough."

"If…John…John Jasper…were given to flying into rages, he would certainly have done so over my singing and piano playing," I said, trying to sound light and airy. I found I couldn't use his given name, for some reason. "But he was always patience itself. Well, mostly."

"The way he looks at you frightens me," said Helena. "If you ever tried to free yourself from him, he would never let you go. He would pursue you to the death."

"Helena." I picked up the locket from my bedside table. "You are so dramatic tonight. I'm sorry about your stepfather. It is good that you are away from him. But Mr Jasper is not that man."

"I hope you are right." She yawned. "Go to sleep now."

I watched him at the Epiphany Service. I watched his hands, so expressive as they conducted the choir, and the way he tipped his head back as if under the burden of heavenly sound. The next time he conducted that choir he would be…would he really be…married? To me?

He sought out my eye, just as he had done on Christmas Day, but I dared not meet it, for fear that other people in the congregation might guess what was in our minds.

I went back to the Nuns' House and, while Helena visited her brother, I packed my carpet bag with my two warmest dresses and assorted underthings. What did I need for a wedding? What should I take to get married?

While the house was quiet, I took the bag and hid it in the stair cupboard, all the better for a quick escape at breakfast time. Then I tried my hardest to behave as if all was perfectly regular.

I slept not a wink. All I could think was _Where shall I sleep tomorrow?_ I did not know how long it would take to get to Scotland. More than one day, I imagined. Perhaps I should be on an overnight train, passing through country I had no knowledge of – the Midlands, Lancashire, the Lakes. Where did one sleep on an overnight train? What would be made of a young lady and a gentleman travelling together? What if Grewgious got wind of it? What if we were followed?

What if, after all, John Jasper changed his mind?

That was the crux of my worries. That was the thought that turned my skin to wax and curdled my blood.

"You are quiet this morning," commented Helena at breakfast. "And so pale. Did you sleep?"

"Not well," I confessed. I tried to force down some toast, thinking I should take a good breakfast, but the corners of it caught in my throat and mocked my attempts to swallow them.

"Perhaps you should go back to bed," suggested Miss Twinkleton. "Get some rest before the girls descend on us tomorrow."

I tried to gather enough breath to answer, a burden of guilt and fear pressing down on my lungs.

"Yes, perhaps I shall. I may take an hour or two's rest."

I rose and entered the hallway, scanning the area for Jessy or another of the maids, carrying trays. It was empty. I retrieved my carpet bag from the cupboard and flitted, lightfooted, to the coats. How quickly could I put on my boots? Satin slippers would not do for the slushy ice outside.

I had never laced them so quickly, knotting them clumsily instead of with my usual perfectly symmetrical bows. I pulled on my cloak and hat, donned my gloves and opened the door as quietly as I could, trying not to let too much icy draught in.

With it shut behind me, I skirted the safe side of the house – the one without the dining room windows – and ran across the lawn, my boots crunching on the grass, until I reached the path that led to town. It was not yet fully light and people on their way to work hurried by, stamping and panting, their breath clouding before their mouths.

I tried my best to blend in, staring straight ahead, approaching the gatehouse. The windows were dark. He had left! Or he was still in bed… I thought about knocking on the door, but couldn't risk drawing attention to myself.

On the other side of the arch, the omnibus stood, filling up with passengers. I had never ridden in this conveyance alone before and rather shrunk from the rough people who seemed to be its chief customers. The conductor took pity on my plight and sat beside me, as if guarding me.

"One ticket for Strood station, please," I asked him, paying him the penny fare.

"Going to London, Miss?" he asked. I didn't think I ought to say anything that might be repeated.

"No," I said. "Just…meeting someone."

"Say no more." He winked and I flushed. He presumed an assignation. And he presumed right.

The omnibus jolted into motion. Nobody chased me along the cobbles. I was on my way to my future. Did I really know what I was doing? The wheels could not turn back, and even if they did, I may have already been missed at the Nuns' House. Everything safe, everything known to me, had been tossed into the sky like a handful of rice. The knowledge that I was crossing a terrible Rubicon leadened my soul.

When the omnibus pulled up on the station concourse I considered, for a terrified moment, staying huddled inside in the corner and going back to Cloisterham. But as the throng of passengers thinned out I rose, lugged the bag out from under the seat and made my way to the back of the vehicle. Peering from the door, I was confronted immediately with the sight of him, standing by the wheel, waiting for me.

"O, you are here," we both said in chorus, then he helped me down the step, took my bag in his other hand and led me swiftly towards the station, looking about him all the time, lest we were seen.

"I have bought two tickets to Gravesend, which is as far as the train will go. We must cross London by cab," he muttered, full of purpose, drawing me through the ticket office and on to the platform. It was as if he thought I might try to escape, so firm was his grip on me.

I thought of Helena saying that he would pursue me to the death. He certainly didn't seem to want to give me time or space to change my mind.

An engine was already approaching along the rails in a haze of steam.

"Mr Jasper…John," I said, turning my face to him. He looked down and allowed an uncertain smile to cross his features. "You seem so anxious. Is all well?"

"All will be well when we are away from this place," he said, poking an escaped curl back inside my bonnet. "I promise you."

He put a hand to his chest, grimacing, then the train chuffed to a halt and he darted forward, opening a door and almost pushing me on.

We found a compartment to ourselves. He put our baggage on the overhead rack then came to sit beside me. I felt very disconnected from myself, as if I were watching my own life unfold before me with no participation in it.

I was on a train with John Jasper. We were eloping.

"Is there no other way?" I said, almost to myself. I tried to stand, to go over to the door while the train was still stationary, but he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

"No, there is no other way," he said. He took my hands. "Come, look at me."

I lifted my eyes to his, which were fearsomely intent.

"You are afraid, Rosebud, which is understandable. I would wonder at you if you were not. The step we are taking will change both of our lives, irrevocably. But the change will be for the better."

The train jolted forward. Jasper held me tighter still.

"You take opium," I whispered.

He raised his eyebrows.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody needed to. I saw the laudanum bottles by your bed."

"I have not taken any since Christmas. I find that I don't need it any more. I will not need it again."

The engine whistled and steam trailed past the window. We began to move. We were on our way.

"You are sure of that?"

"I took it to block the pain of knowing that you were Ned's."

"_Truly?_ I drove you to opium?"

"I wouldn't put it quite like that. But there is no pain to block out, not any more. You have taken it away."

"So…if I had not been on the omnibus? What then?"

"You were. There is no need to dwell on might-have-beens."

"You would have taken solace from opium?"

"Rosebud." He was warning me.

"I am sorry. I feel I should be wonderfully excited and full of the romance of it all, but the truth is, I'm terrified."

"Tell me your fears."

"It is one fear – the fear of making a terrible mistake."

"The terrible mistake would have been marrying Ned. The terrible mistake would have been staying at the Nuns' House instead of coming here today. When two people are so clearly intended for each other, the only mistake is in denying it. You don't deny it, do you?"

"You are so much surer than I am. So much more steadfast in your purpose. I feel unworthy of you, beset by doubts as I am."

"When I am your husband, you shall have no doubts at all. I can ensure it."

"You can ensure it? How?"

He turned from me and pulled down the blind at the inner compartment window.

"Thus," he whispered, and he took me in his arms and kissed me all the way to Gravesend.

I had to confess, the kissing rather melted the doubts away. I was in considerably better spirits when we engaged a cab at the station to take us across London to Euston, even if my lips were somewhat swollen and my cheeks afire with a kind of rash provoked by his sideburns. I wondered if people could tell I had been kissing shamelessly in a railway carriage with a gentleman not yet my husband. Heavens, what kind of creature had I become?

The London streets bowled past, roughly and sometimes alarmingly, while Jasper held on to me, his hand on my waist.

The kissing had rendered me more docile, but now I could not help wondering about what might follow. When he kissed me, he sometimes drew back, explaining that he did not want to go too far. What would going too far entail? What did he mean by it? I wanted to ask, but feared the question might be indelicate and he would be disgusted by me. The kissing in the railway carriage had given hints of the sweeter and less innocent delights that lay a little further along that perilous path of sensual abandon. Sometimes, the placement of his hands was too close to my bosom; sometimes, he kissed my neck so hard it must have left a mark. And, what was more, I wanted him to. I wanted him to touch me where I had never been touched, and to lead me through each new sensation that unfolded. I wanted him to take what he wanted from me, what he had wanted for so long.

All I could think about was where we would sleep tonight.

"Shall we be in Scotland today?" I asked him.

"Oh no, it will take a little longer. It will be late at night by the time the train arrives at Carlisle. We shall have to find a bed there and take a coach to Gretna Green in the morning."

"A bed." My lips trembled over the word.

He cupped my elbow and held me closer.

He thought of it too.

"Don't fret," he murmured. The cab went over a pot hole and nearly threw us out.

At Euston we dined indifferently on some boiled beef while I watched the terminus ebb and flow with strange and desperate people. I saw at least three people have their pockets picked. London seemed an awful and dangerous place. Did Jasper really want to live here?

"I don't think I like London," I told him. "Cloisterham is so much pleasanter."

"London is not best represented by its railway stations," said Jasper disapproving of my piqued tone. "There are better parts, many of them."

"It seems very poor and overcrowded. And dirty." I pulled my wrap around me primly.

"We shall a find a place that suits you. That suits us both. In the length and breadth of England, somewhere will present itself."

"It needn't be London?"

"Not at all. If there are opportunities elsewhere, we can take them."

I pushed my plate away.

"I cannot imagine what it will be like to be married."

"Soon you will not need to. Have you finished?"

I nodded and stood, trailing after him as he carried the luggage across to the ticket office.

"What would you do if I left this place and went back to Cloisterham?" I asked him, once we were in the queue.

He frowned at me. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked. But I wanted to know.

"You are not thinking of doing so?"

"No. But what would you do?"

"That's another might-have-been, my love. I think I've explained that we won't be dealing in those."

"Would you come after me?"

"Of course."

I shut my eyes, shuddering pleasurably.

"But you won't be leaving," he added. "Two return tickets to Carlisle, please."

Exhaustion swept over me on the Carlisle train and I slept for the largest part of the journey, my head lolling against Jasper's arm, regardless of the passengers who came and went at intervening stations. I slept to blot out the fear that grew larger and darker with each mile out of London: the insidious dread of the unknown.

When I awoke the sun had gone down and we were travelling through snowy forest, alone again in the compartment.

"Heavens, you were tired," said Jasper, putting down the book he was reading with the arm I hadn't used as a headrest. "Hours you've been lost to us. My arm is quite dead."

He extended and flexed it, then he smiled at me with such tenderness.

O, I don't know what was wrong with me. I burst into a passion of weeping.

"Rosebud," he remonstrated, holding my face in his hands. "What are these tears?"

"It is so dark and I don't know where we are and…I don't know."

I was ruining my own elopement.

"It is night time, and we are near Carlisle, and whatever it is that you don't know, try and identify it and I will reassure you."

"You will be kind to me? Won't you?"

"Yes, my love, yes, of course I will. Surely you are not still afraid of me, as you used to be?"

"I am a little. Helena said you reminded her of her stepfather."

"I have never met the fellow in my life, so I don't see what bearing that has…"

"She said he was a violent man with terrible moods who drank and beat them."

He swallowed. I felt guilty.

"You…that is what you think of me?"

"No. I don't. I don't know you."

What a time to make such an admission. On a train, on the way to Gretna Green to get married.

"Listen to me, Rosebud. Listen to what I say. I am here, with you, because I want you. Because I love you, and have loved you since I first saw you. No man ever loved a woman more. I don't know how Miss Landless's stepfather felt about his wife, but his actions suggest that there was little love in his heart. You will never be treated as she was."

"What if I am not the person you think me? What if I disappoint you as a wife?"

"Rosy." He looked positively anguished, then he bent his head and kissed my lips. "You won't disappoint me. And I won't disappoint you. Nobody was ever more cared for, more cherished than you will be."

"Really?" I whispered.

"Really. Now dry your tears and put on your gloves. I think Carlisle is in sight."

We found a hotel, a few streets from the station. It was not the most salubrious place, but nowhere else had a room so late at night.

_A_ room.

Nowhere at all had two.

We had to buy some greasy baked potatoes from a street vendor by the station and take them to the attic room we were allotted. Elopement was not such a glamorous business as one might think. The room was cold and draughty, with one bed and a chair before an unlit grate.

John Jasper lit the fire while I shivered and tried to use the baked potato to heat me.

"I should like a hot bath," I remarked, but it was too late to trouble the hotelier for one. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I would see that I got one. Train travel made one so disgustingly filthy. I couldn't possibly get married in a patina of coal dust.

I lay on the bed, boots, cloak and all, and watched John Jasper at the fireplace. His bent spine, his braced shoulders, his feet in their shiny black boots, the furrows on his brow as he toiled with the matches and firelighters.

Was it love that I felt for him? Whatever it was, the sight of him, every part of him, was inordinately pleasing to me. Not just to my eye, but to some fundamental aspect of me, deep within me. I wanted to touch him, to be beside him.

I had eaten the potato by the time the fire had kindled. Jasper sat down in the threadbare armchair and began to pick at his.

"You should sleep," he said. "There is a screen in the corner if you wish to…I will not look."

_What if I want you to?_

But, once warmth spread through the room, I went over behind the ugly screen and took off my dress. I peeped over to check that John Jasper was as good as his word. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair, white at the knuckles. I let the dress swish down and he gripped it harder. I was quite glad I could not see his face.

I felt both imperilled and oddly secure. Nothing would happen that I did not want, I was sure of it. Yet there must be things he wanted…things he had wanted for a long time…I tried to imagine them but rebuked myself. There was time enough for…all that…when we were married. Tomorrow! We would be married tomorrow.

I burrowed beneath the chilly covers and drew them to my chin, still in my camisole and drawers – and my stockings, for I did not think bare feet would fare well in this room once the fire died.

It was so unlike my bed and my room at the Nuns' House. Helena would be in there now, perhaps lying awake, sick with worry about me. Instead, I lay on a lumpy bedstead looking at peeling wallpaper while, mere feet from me, sat a man.

I was ruined, that much I knew. If he didn't marry me now, I would have a reputation forever.

"What do you think they will be doing, in Cloisterham now?" I asked.

Jasper looked over at me, his face reflecting the flickers of flame.

"There is no need to think of that," he said. "There is nothing to be done about it."

"You could sing me a lullaby," I said. "I like to hear you sing."

His lips curled upwards; his face was lit with tenderness and I wanted him closer to me.

"I don't think the other residents would care to be woken…"

"Sing it softly, then. Come close to me and sing it softly."

I sat up and put my hand on the coverlet. There was ample room for two.

"Rosa, I would like nothing more, but I think I should stay here."

"That chair does not look comfortable."

"It is…adequate."

"And there is a cobweb in the corner, which means there may be a spider in the room, which may come down and walk over my face, so I shall never sleep…"

"Rosebud…"

"Please."

"If I come there I shall not touch you."

"I don't mind. I just want you beside me."

He relented, taking off his coat and boots and lying down on top of the covers.

"You will be cold," I whispered. "Put the blankets over you."

"I am not cold."

I put a hand on his cheek. He caught my wrist and removed it firmly.

"Are you afraid you will go too far?" I whispered.

"Yes."

"Mr Jasper…John…what happens when you go too far?"

"Believe me, Rosebud, you are very close to finding out. Now sleep."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

In my dream I stood on the Nuns' House lawn with my satin-slippered toes sinking into the frost, until it spread up my body, freezing and cracking my skin, turning me translucent blue.

Stirring out of the frigid vision, I perceived that my nose was numb and so were my toes. This was alarming in itself, but even more so was the sound of somebody breathing heavily, very close to me. My brain cottoned on just as my eyelids flew up. That dark shape on the bed beside me was John Jasper.

The fire was out now and I did not know the hour, but it was still very dark, and I struggled to make out his features. I propped myself on an elbow and exhaled through my mouth in an attempt to warm my nose. How warm was he?

I reached for the hand that was laid across his stomach, on his shirt. It was cold, but I could just about make out the warm blood that lurked beneath. I shuffled closer to him, seeking shelter. I wished he was beneath the blankets, then I would drape myself on top of him. I let my fingers wander off his hand and up his shirt, not quite daring to slip them inside the buttons to see what might be there.

He shifted a little and some whispery sounds came out of his lips. I tried to catch their import, but there was no sense in them. I put my palm flat on his chest. It felt completely hard and indestructible, as if it would repel any weapon or blade. I had always admired his build, even when I did not admire him, and thought his stature impeccable. But to touch it…I never thought I would be inspecting him at such close quarters. _And tonight the quarters will be closer._ I shivered, my hand crawling up over his shoulder.

His collar was loose, exposing most of his neck. I pushed a finger into the more yielding flesh there, pressing down. He made a sound that might have been pain, but I somehow knew wasn't, and his breath grew irregular and heavier.

This was fascinating, but a little frightening. I wondered what I would have to do to wake him.

I bent to his ear and whispered into it. "John Jasper, wake up. I want you."

He didn't wake up, but when I cupped the back of his neck in my hand and laid my head on his chest, he stirred like a great beast disturbed from slumber and threw an arm across me, pulling me close. The arm was heavy and tense and I struggled with it in vain. He turned, pushing his body into mine – even through the blankets that separated us I could feel the heat coursing through him, and there was this great lump somewhere about his person that ground against my hip until I was sure it would bruise. As he held me, he made fearful inarticulate noises, all broken and gruff. I was sure he must be in the grip of a nightmare and the panicked idea that he might accidentally suffocate me or break my bones seized me.

"John Jasper!" I cried, as loudly as I dared, pushing as hard as I possibly could against his chest. "Wake up now."

He shook his head violently and gibbered like a lunatic and then he was awake and I was looking into stunned, scared blue eyes.

For a moment, neither of us spoke, frozen both literally and figuratively.

"Oh good God, Rosebud, what did I do to you?" he said, releasing his breath. He laid his hand on my shoulder under the blanket. "Are you…what did I…do?"

"Nothing. Good heavens, you look haunted. Nothing has happened, but I thought you were having a nightmare so I woke you up."

His breathing came more evenly now. "Are you sure?" He reached down and I felt his hand cover that hard lump that had hurt my hip. Actually, it wasn't so hard now. "Oh God. I thought…" He lay down flat with his other hand across his brow, blinking up at the ceiling.

"I thought you looked cold," I said timidly. "I tried to warm you."

"You put your hands on me."

"Was I wrong? Was it brazen of me?"

"In my dream…I thought I violated you."

_He dreamt of violating me. _Sweet heavens. I had to shut my eyes, bite my tongue to stop myself telling him that I wanted him to…The thought of everything he meant to do to me…I felt like a hunted creature, run deliciously to earth. Tonight he would go too far.

I heard voices down the stair. Perhaps morning had come.

"We must find ourselves a coachman. Go downstairs and take your bath. The earlier we set out, the sooner we can be married."

"The sooner I can be violated," I said, reaching over him for a candle. He took hold of my waist and pulled me out of the bedding, on to his lap.

"Rosebud," he said in a shocked, hushed tone, but his eye glinted with wickedness. "What's this you say?"

"I think you heard me."

"Mmm." He drew me into a kiss of such naked sensuality that, at long last, I forgot my frozen toes and my body bloomed with bounteous desire. I knelt between his thighs, my arms around his neck, my body soft and pliant against his. I used my lips, my tongue, my teeth, and I felt that lump of hardness again, brushing my drawers.

Just as I was sure violation was imminent, he patted me on the bottom and pushed me off him.

"The bath," he gasped. "Now, Rosebud. Without delay."

He was ready to leave by the time I came back upstairs, in my best winter dress – my wedding dress, I supposed – with my hair wet.

"Ready?" He held up my cloak, putting it over my shoulders.

I was ready. More than ready now. All of yesterday's doubts, even in this dingy, depressing place, seemed unreal and childish. I loved this man; he loved me. What was more proper than that we should marry?

We negotiated a carriage to Gretna Green, though all the coachmen charged ridiculously high fares, knowing, I suppose, that they could. Nonetheless, Jasper had the money and we set off at a breathless pace through the forests that lay either side of the Scottish border, over rivers that glistened with the early morning sun.

It was so cold, but my excitement provided a kind of elemental warmth.

"Is it far?"

"Not far at all. We will be there within the hour."

"What then? What must we do?"

"I'm told we must find a blacksmith."

"A blacksmith? Not a priest?"

"The rules are different in Scotland."

"But it shall be a proper marriage? It will be legally binding?"

"Oh yes. It must be recognised in law. Some people have a second wedding in England, to satisfy the desire for white dresses and cake. I don't know if you should like that?"

"Perhaps. I haven't ever thought about it."

"Even when you were engaged to Ned?"

"I avoided thinking of it then. I suppose I always hoped it would never happen."

He squeezed my hand. "As did I," he said.

"Are you nervous?" I asked him.

"No. Not at all. There is no reason to be."

He made me almost believe it.

Gretna Green was a queer little place with its long low buildings, and yet it was rather busy. Jasper and I found an inn, at which we booked a room, and then we looked for this blacksmiths. Indeed, it was not difficult to find, for it was the hub of the village.

As we approached, we noticed another couple loitering by the door.

"These will do," proclaimed the gentleman, a flashy-looking fellow with a very fine moustache. "Let us ask them. I say, would you care to be our witnesses? We will, of course, return the favour."

The lady at his side, who was finely-dressed but plain, gave us a beseeching look.

"You are in luck," said Jasper, "for we will need witnesses too."

"Capital!" The man thrust out his hand. "Montague Bellway, Sir, at your service. And this is my blushing bride-to-be, Lady Maude Rochester."

Jasper shook hands with the man and bowed to the lady. "John Jasper," he said. "And Miss Rosa Bud."

"Dashed swine of a journey, what? Pardon me, ladies. But it is."

"The time of year is not advantageous," said Jasper with a tight smile. "But elopements are rarely perfectly planned, I suppose."

"You're right, dash it. Had to get here in a bit of a hurry. Suspect the Duke may roll up any minute. Well, no time to lose. Shall we go in?"

Bellway led them through a stable door into a working forge. At their entrance, the smith looked up from his hammering, wiped his hands on his leather apron and smiled a black-toothed smile.

"It's a wedding ye'll be wantin', I take it?"

This seemed so extremely irregular that I couldn't help thinking we had perhaps been taken in by some fraudulent practice. How on earth could this be a place where people got married? I clung to Jasper's arm and listened while they negotiated prices to conduct the service.

Money changed hands and the blacksmith took off his apron and took a large ledger off a shelf.

Bellway and Lady Maude were invited to stand at either side of the anvil while the blacksmith stood between them. He asked them each if they wanted to marry. They said yes, then he joined their hands over a horseshoe and hammered each end no more than four times. And that, it seemed was it! Bellway put the ring on Lady Maude's finger, there was an awkward kiss and then we all signed the register.

"Good show," said Bellway, signing with a flourish and handing the pen to his wife. "No nonsense, what? Just the ticket."

I rather thought just a little more nonsense might make the affair that much pleasanter, but I refrained from comment. That this was really all it took to give one's hand had sobered me.

"Rosa," said Jasper softly, drawing me back towards the anvil.

"This is…so strange," I said, haltingly.

"It will soon be done," he said, taking me to stand to the right of the blacksmith, while he faced me from the left.

"Your names?" asked the smith laconically.

"John Jasper and Rosa Bud," he replied.

"Right ye are. And do you, Mr John Jasper, take Miss Rosa Bud to be your wife?"

"Yes," he said.

I felt as if I might be sick. All the blood rushed to my head. I put a hand on the anvil; its coldness levelled my senses.

"And you do, Miss Rosa Bud, take Mr John Jasper to be your husband?"

I swallowed hard. I wasn't sure I could support my voice.

Jasper's eyes were absolutely fixed on me, his brow low. It was the way he used to look at me when I sang, as if everything in his life rested on me. Perhaps it did.

"Yes," I whispered, then I said it again, nerved by the way my lips had done what I thought they would. "Yes."

Jasper's fingers reached for mine, twining together over the horseshoe. I flinched as the hammer fell, worried that it might accidentally hit us and finish Jasper's hopes of teaching piano in London for good. But he held completely fast, finding a ring box in his waistcoat pocket with his unoccupied hand. The blacksmith put down his hammer and Jasper put the ring on me.

I stared at it as if I didn't know what it was. How funny it looked, there on my finger. How heavy it felt.

"Ye're man and wife," said the blacksmith offhandedly. "The register's over yonder."

Jasper tilted my chin with a finger and kissed me while the other newlyweds applauded politely.

My whole body was in a state of convulsion. I was married. I had truly taken the step which could never be retraced. Now it was done, I felt light, as if I might fly upwards the moment Jasper loosened his grip on me. If he ever did. He looked like a man who had won life's greatest prize and intended to cling on to it until his cold, dead fingers were prised off.

We signed the register and I watched, transfixed by the way he wielded the pen, so assertively, without a tremor. My hand wobbled all over the place when the time came. When my details were complete, he took the pen from me, gave it to Bellway and lifted the hand that wore the ring, inspecting it.

"When did you buy it?" I asked him.

"I never bought it," he said shortly. "It has always been mine."

I thought to question further, but our witnesses, ebullient and bonhomous, harried us out of the forge.

"Now for the wedding breakfast, what what?" chortled Bellway, lighting up a fat cigar and offering one to Jasper, who took it.

"O, you do not smoke cigars," I exclaimed, surprised.

"Not under normal circumstances," he said, bending to accept Bellway's light. "Which these are not."

"What is it like? I want to try it." The smoke was acrid and made me cough. How much worse must it be if you actually ingested it?

"You do not." He turned to Bellway. "We have a room at the inn."

"You do? We are going to have some nosh then make a start back to town, I think. Business doesn't wait for love, you know."

"What line are you in?"

"Oh, I don't know, old fellow. Bit of speculation here and there. Railways, mostly. Do you have any such interests? I can give you some inside tips."

"No, no."

"What do you do then? Something respectable, I'd wager."

"He is a musician," I said. "A wonderful one."

"Good God, you don't say so. Don't meet many of those, I must say. What are you, an instrumentalist of some kind?"

"I am the choirmaster at the cathedral in Cloisterham. I daresay you don't know it."

"Cloisterham? On the coast, little bit south east of town?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't know it. Ah, here we are. Capital. I have a mind to call for a good roast bird of some kind. How about you? And champagne. Plenty of champagne. You did think to bring your pocketbook, didn't you, old girl?"

"Yes, dear heart."

Over an extravagant lunch, Monty and Maude regaled us with their tale of thwarted love. Maude, the only child of a Duke, had met Monty at the races. It had been love at first sight. Apparently.

"How about you, Jasper?" Monty wished to know, after the torrid story was told. "Who's chasing after you with a shotgun?"

"Nobody, I would hope. But Rosa is an orphan and her guardian does not approve of me, so…"

"Why the devil not? A fine upstanding fellow like yourself – a cathedral choirmaster, no less! This guardian must be a blockhead."

I snorted into my champagne. Jasper laid his hand on my shoulder.

"It is no more than a misunderstanding. Rosa was promised elsewhere for a long time, and our union has ended that agreement."

"Oh, I say, you stole her from another fellow! Well, that puts a different complexion on things, you must admit."

"I was not _stolen_," I said coldly. "I gave my heart freely."

"But the other chap – might he demand satisfaction? Or has he already done so? Is a duel in the offing? I say, if you need a second…"

"I hope there will be no question of that," said Jasper, then after a pause, he added. "The gentleman in question is my nephew."

Monty stared at us, thunderstruck with admiration, then he leant over and slapped Jasper on the back.

"I say. Fine work, old man. I thought we were going it, but you take the prize. Fair play to you. I raise my glass."

He lifted his high and shouted, "More champagne!" in the direction of the bar.

But Jasper shook his head and cast a sideways glance at me that stopped me in my tracks, the glass half-lifted to my lips.

"We have drunk enough," he said.

My throat tightened, a knot forming in my stomach.

_The time has come._

Bubbles fizzed then burst. I felt the bursting inside me.

"Oh, quite, old fellow," said Monty, suddenly flustered. "Mustn't be drunk in charge, must we? Not now we have brides, what?"

"It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I wish you a long and happy marriage," said Jasper, standing and shaking Monty's hand over the trestle table. "But I think my wife and I shall retire to our room now."

_My wife and I_. I quelled an urge to laugh hysterically, putting my hand over my mouth. Maude smiled in sympathy.

Jasper took my hand and I bade my strange new friends farewell, looking over my shoulder at them as my husband bore me onward towards the staircase.

"I rather think," he muttered, treading the stairs, "we may have encountered one of Miss Twinkleton's fortune hunters."

I pursed my lips. "Poor Maude."

"Yes, poor Maude."

My legs felt heavy now. He reached the landing and fitted a key into the lock of the nearest door. It opened into a room much pleasanter than the attic hole in Carlisle. The fire was already lit and our bags lay on a large four-poster bed.

He shut the door.

I clasped my hands and put them to my lips, trying to still the incessant trembling of my limbs. Standing behind me, he put his hands on my shoulders, then reached around to remove my cloak. He spun me around by my waist, standing with both hands almost spanning it.

"You are nervous," he said softly.

"Yes."

He caressed my cheek then his fingers curled around my neck, pulling me forward into a kiss. It was sweet, reassuring, exploratory at first, then it grew more demanding. I collapsed against him, holding on to the cold creases of his coat sleeves, pinned to him by one hand at my back, another in my hair and that instant, urgent communion of lips. I did not know which of us shook more, me or him. Passion was master of us both and we were lost in the tempestuous seas of desire.

He broke off, panting, and rested his head on my shoulder for a second before lifting it and saying. "Your dress. Turn around."

He was going to undress me. And he had every right to.

The dress buttoned up the back. I felt his breath at my neck and the sensuous brush of his fingers at my top button. When he undid it, he kissed the skin revealed, the bump at the top of my spine. He continued, until my camisole and corset were uncovered, then he passed the mid-point at my waist and eased it down over my petticoats. He untied these too, and when all my skirts lay in a pool of net and wool and foregone modesty at my feet, he put his arms about my stomach and held me. His chin rested on my shoulder and his lips sought the curve of my neck, covering it with his kisses.

"This thing," he said, suddenly yanking at the laces of my corset. "It is cruel. Let us have it off."

"Oh." The corset had felt like a defence, a shell. Now it was gone, I had nothing to stand between me and…violation. Yet, in a heartbeat, all the need to preserve modesty and maintain virtue had been dispelled. That dirty-faced blacksmith had sanctioned voluptuousness, given permission for passion. What we were doing was allowed, it was expected, it was right.

I couldn't seem to shake off a residual shame at being thus before him, in my undergarments, and my cheeks flamed regardless.

He stroked the straps of my camisole with a heartfelt sigh, warming my shoulders then moving his hands down until they rested, oh, they rested beneath my breasts. He held them, and his voice in my ear said, "Rosa, Rosa Bud, my Rosa." I suspended the air in my lungs, agog to know what he would do.

He pressed down on the left hand side, and said, "Your heart. I can feel it. How quickly it beats."

He cupped the breasts, inside their linen covering, and traced the outline of my nipples. They stood up, stiff and almost painful, and when he touched them it made them all the more so. He rubbed the material against them until I could barely stand it. I twisted my hips, pushing myself against him. There was that hardness again, a rigidity that impressed itself into the small of my back.

"Oh yes," he crooned, when I rubbed my head into his shoulder and let out a shuddering breath. "Arms up." He held them straight then lifted the camisole all the way up until my upper body was entirely unclothed. His hands returned to cup my naked breasts, his thumbs sending streaks of ravishing sensation from my nipples downwards.

I craned my neck to look at his face; his eyes were half-closed, spots of high colour in his cheeks. He caught me looking and kissed my brow, then he lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed.

He took off my boots and stockings, then removed his own coat and waistcoat, laying them over a chair, looking down at me with dark intent all the time he unbuttoned and shed his garments. I watched with fascination, trying not to look too avid but unable to restrain my urge to know what he looked like underneath his clothes.

His cravat was next to go, untied and pulled from his collar, and then he removed his shirt, pulled his braces over his arms and performed the same ritual with his undershirt. How strange to see his chest, his muscular arms reaching down to take off his boots, his bare shoulders. I wanted to place my hands on all of it, but first he unbuttoned his trousers, divesting of them along with his drawers.

I took a sharp breath and clenched my fists, looking away to the canopy of the bed. I tried to blink the vision away. What had I just seen?

He sat on the edge of the bed and stroked my cheek.

"Still nervous?"

"What comes next?" I looked at his face, keeping my eyes averted from his…that thing.

"Well," he said, swinging his legs around until he lay full length beside me, facing me propped on his elbow. His palm lay on the drawstring of my undergarment. "First, this must go." He undid the lace, pulling it up high in the air above my navel, then he gripped the waistband and tugged it down. I clenched my thighs together and shut my eyes. Nothing was hidden from him – everything was on show.

The linen abandoned me to my fate, rumpling past my ankles, then gone. Even with my eyelids shut, I saw Jasper's shadow, felt him closer to me. He put his thumb on my cheek, making me open my eyes.

"Here," he whispered, and we clasped each other and pressed tight, skin on skin, legs and arms and mouths together, rolling around, always with that ominous hardness wedged against my belly, distracting me from full immersion into our hungry, soul-stealing kisses. His hands were all over me, and then his mouth was on my breast, suckling at it and I tried not to whimper but it was too hard to just lie there and watch his head descending on me. I wound my fingers into his hair, which was so springy and dense. He was crouching over me, our legs sliding up and down each other, but that thing was still there and every time it prodded me I flinched, despite the rippling sensations his tongue produced at my nipple.

He sensed my avoidance and looked up, bringing his face back into line with mine. His eyes, my eyes, locked together, nothing else in the world, a whole world unto itself. It was a new way of living.

"Have you ever…" He let his hand trail down my stomach until it rested, dangerously, on my nether parts. "Touched this part of you? In self-pleasure?"

I bit my lip, furiously blushful. What kind of girl did he think me?

"Indeed I have not," I said.

His smile was fond and sad. "You have never wanted to?"

Oh, that was a different question, and much harder to answer.

"Sometimes I have felt curious," I said at length. "But it is not decent…"

His fingers moved lower, parting my lips a fraction. I tried to close my thighs but he put a knee between them, holding them open.

"There is nothing wrong in this," he said. One of his fingers drew an oval around that curious bud of flesh that sometimes throbbed so insistently, especially after my music lessons. Life and sensation flooded into it, even more than had been provoked by our wild kissing. "Nothing wrong in a husband touching his wife."

I supposed he was right, and even if he wasn't, the slow burn in the pit of my stomach his ministrations engendered meant that I wouldn't have much cared. Oh, whatever was the meaning of this? He persisted with his rhythmic stroking of my little nub, increasing the speed and pressure on it while I lay amazed at the steady heightening of pleasure that grew and grew and grew within me. All the time he watched my face, his lips slightly parted, his eyes like blue flames, waiting for something. Waiting for me to do something.

"Give in to me," he whispered. "Give me your surrender."

That central fountain of pleasure spilled out of me, a sudden and surprising surge that overtook me, transporting me to a place where I was always and forever under Jasper's hand, giving him my innermost secrets. The enormity of it alarmed me; I gripped at his arms and arched my spine and let my voice free, a long and shuddering sigh that ended with his name.

There was such joy in his face when I spoke it, I wanted to weep.

I had not realised these pleasures existed, even having read all the obscure hints in the bible and the works of the poets – at least, not for a woman. Why was all of literature so silent on this aspect of our bodies? And yet Jasper knew of it. Perhaps there was a Psalm somewhere…

"This was…I did not know of this," I whispered, touching his cheek, his ear, his lips.

"This was the first time, truly?"

"Truly."

"Not the last. By no means the last," he said. His fingers, still planted in that part of me, reached behind, slipping into a shallow dip. I tensed again and frowned at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Now you are prepared, there is the matter of…consummation."

"Oh. And…?"

He pushed a little deeper and I gasped. That was by no means as pleasurable as what he had done before.

He removed his fingers from me, took one of my wrists and guided my hand down to where the dreaded thing lay, resting on my downy hair, pointing up my stomach. He made me touch it. It was like warm clay, firm but with some yield. When I pinched it, he screwed his eyes tightly shut and gasped as if in pain.

"Oh, Rosebud. Like this."

He made me wrap my fingers around it.

"This is your manhood," I said, the word making me want to laugh, if only I hadn't been so close to tears. "As I've heard _certain_ nuns' girls call it." Kitty Mason was always wondering aloud about manhoods. It had made me feel sick at the time.

"You see its size and length. It must go…here." He tapped at that little shallow area he had investigated before.

"Oh no! It cannot possibly!"

He smiled apologetically. "It can," he said. "It will. And you will not be damaged. But it will hurt, I'm afraid. Just this one time."

"I have heard tell…" Kitty Mason had said _Blood everywhere! Blood on the curtains and carpets! _

"Oh, you have?"

"Only from silly nuns' girls."

"Well, in this case, the silly nuns' girls are right." He shifted himself, moving so that our hips lined up. The blunt tip of that thing, the manhood, pushed between my nether lips, bathing itself in the wetness there. I wriggled a little, trying to edge back up the bed, but Jasper took both my wrists and held them on the pillow, either side of my head. "Hush," he said. "I will do my best to make it as painless as I can. Once this first time is over, it will never be painful again, I promise you. Indeed, I will make you see how it can be the opposite. You will know such pleasures."

I trusted his word, I knew he would do his utmost to be gentle with me, yet I could not quite convince my body of this. If only he'd brought some laudanum. Maybe that would have done the trick.

He widened his legs, making mine spread further apart, then he released one of my wrists so he had a free hand to lift my hips a little and encourage me to bend my knees. Now the wide rounded end of his manhood lay at the place that would surely never accommodate it and my heart began to pound.

"It will never fit," I protested, my fingers fluttering, wrists trying to flex out of his grasp.

"Rosebud, do you think I am lying to you? It will. There will a moment of pain, no longer than a few seconds, and then it will be over. Can you be brave for me?"

He kissed my forehead. I braced myself, scrunching my toes up tight.

He made a move forward, then he could go no further. Already I felt sure I was going to be torn in half.

"Oh, please don't kill me!" I pleaded, hardly knowing what I said.

He took a breath, rested his head on my shoulders.

"If you really fear me so much…"

"No, no, it must be done. Do it. I am ready."

He lifted his head again and made one sudden, sharp surge forward.

O, he was right. It hurt. A quick, fierce pain tore through me, unbearable for a second or two before it began to dull. I hissed through it, but I didn't cry out, so I supposed it wasn't all that bad.

"Brave girl," he said. "There, it is done. The bad part is over."

He released my wrists and we kissed. I hadn't realised tears had fallen from my eyes until he kissed them away.

"So…this is…consummation? Now? Is it done?"

"No, it is not done," he said, with a desperate half-laugh. "Not yet. I will try to take this gently."

We lay quietly for a while. I tried to adjust to what was inside me. All the way inside me, I ascertained, squinting downwards. It did not feel natural. How did this encounter end? What was its climax?

Jasper pushed at me with his hips, as if he meant to seat it deeper, though this did not seem possible, then he ground it around a little, rotating it, accustoming me to the stretched, burning feeling. I could concentrate on nothing else. My heart still jumped erratically and I was slightly nauseous.

Slowly, inexorably, he fell into a process of pulling slightly back and then pushing in again. It was still uncomfortable and just so _strange_, but I comforted myself with the utter rapture it all seemed to induce in him. He looked the way he did when he conducted his choir sometimes, transported on a heavenly wave, but his face shone with exertion and he uttered the most affecting little sighs from deep in his throat. The pleasure he had given me had been extreme and intense – I perceived he was edging towards something similar on his own behalf. Was that how it always worked? He gave it to me, then I gave it to him? Was it always so separate, or could it be mutual?

As his back and forth persisted, I noticed that the pain was receding, no longer a keen thing but a background ache. Perhaps next time I would feel nothing. It seemed unlikely that I could derive personal pleasure from this, but Jasper seemed to think it possible. How could it be so?

In my musings, I was caught off-guard by his sudden jolt, a shuddering clutch of his hands in my hair, a glassy widening of his eyes. He sheathed himself deep inside and made the sound of a man in pain before collapsing with his full weight on top of me.

"Rosebud," he whispered. "Oh. You cannot know…"

He appeared to need some time to gather himself. I held him in my arms, astonished at his unexpected moment of vulnerability.

"_Now_ it is done?" I whispered, just to be sure.

"Now. Yes, now it is done. And next time it will be so much better. Every time. Every night. I promise you."

He lifted his head from my breast, braced himself on his elbows and pulled his manhood slowly out of me. After it came a gush. _The blood._ I sat up and looked at it, but it was not the haemorrhage of Kitty Mason's lore. Bright red and sticky, a patch of it stained the white undersheet, so that I blushed to think of it being laundered by some stranger the next day. The tops of my thighs were smeared with more, its coppery tang mixed with all the other, less familiar scents. John Jasper reached for his waistcoat and took his handkerchief from the pocket, dabbing at me with tender concern. Tenderness was the word to apply to my deflowered interior too. It all felt fearfully sensitive. I could not imagine doing this for a second time while it throbbed so.

"You have given me everything I ever wished for," he said, putting the ruined handkerchief aside and laying me back down beside him. He put my hand on his stomach and held it there, stroking my knuckles. "You cannot know how happy you have made me. I am sorry that first time had to be so…brutal."

"It was not brutal. You cannot help it if we are so stupidly built."

He squeezed my fingers, smiling at me.

"I don't consider you to be stupidly built," he said. "Now the pain is over, there will be only pleasure to take. Put your head here, rest awhile. It is still only afternoon, but marriage is a tiring business."

I could not argue with him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

He was already awake when my slumbers broke. How wonderful and new it was to come to consciousness in a pair of beloved arms, with a beloved face gazing down at one. Even the unusual tender throb below my belly felt sweet and precious to me now, something I wanted to preserve, though of course it would fade in time.

I felt that I had shed a skin and now I was another creature, alive to everything but perilously sensitive too.

"John Jasper," I whispered to him, trying to smile.

"Mrs Jasper," he whispered back.

"I believe I love you," I told him.

He wrapped his arms tighter around me, bringing my head to rest on his chest. I had not realised men could have hair on their chests, though it was sparser than that on his head.

"These words," he said. "I have heard them in my mind a thousand times, yet never knew how…" His voice caught. I felt his chest rise and fall more rapidly beneath my cheek. I could hear the powerful rhythm of his heart, his inner metronome. This would be _presto_, approaching _agitato_. Ugh, that metronome. _Think not of it, Rosa._

"I have heard your declaration before," I said, yawning. "But I think I could bear to hear it again."

"Then you shall." Now the choked note was out of his voice and it was all warmth, all smiles. "I have the great good fortune to be a man who loves his wife with all his heart."

I wriggled pleasurably against him.

"But," I said, daring to voice a thought that had occurred to me once the throes of that bliss he had induced had subsided. "You have loved before."

"No, indeed, or not a love such as this. Mere fancies. Why do you say that?"

"How could you know what to do, if you had never done it?"

"Oh, I see. Well. Yes. It was not my first time."

I sensed he was not comfortable with this line of questioning, but I did not see why I should shy away from the subject.

"Then when was that?"

"Rosa." He frowned down at me but I did not flinch or look away.

"I do not censure you for it. I merely ask for information."

"Such information is not necessary. What is past is past and I feel neither pride nor shame. Young men will sometimes embroil themselves in unsuitable liaisons."

"Oh, unsuitable liaisons. How fascinating. How do they come about? I cannot imagine it."

"Oh, Rosebud." He sat up, dislodging me, and ran a hand through his hair, which had become most unruly. "I forget how little of the world you know."

"Then you must teach me. As you used to teach me music."

"As I still intend to. I shall have your fingering technique polished if it kills me."

"Do not stray off the subject, Mr Jasper! Who was she?"

"I will tell you this once and then the matter is closed. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly. Now, tell me your story, please."

"You must not breathe a word of it to anyone, ever."

"Oh my goodness, John, you will drive me wild with anticipation. Please!"

"In my final year at the cathedral school, a certain lady took an interest in me."

"What certain lady?"

"A certain married lady."

"John! No!"

"Yes. She was the wife of one of the minor canons, lively and young, though older than I, of course, by some eight years."

"She seduced you?"

"I was, I fear, rather willingly seduced, as young men of seventeen will be."

"Oh, you were the same age as me."

"Yes, I suppose I was. How long ago it seems."

"Did your conscience never trouble you?"

"It did, Rosa, most horribly, but I had a need to lose myself and this provided the opportunity."

"Lose yourself?"

"Forget the realities of my existence, the contemplation of which blighted all my chances of happiness."

"Were you so miserable?"

"I was, my love. Though I am not now." He put an arm around my shoulders. I kept the covers pulled up high, over my naked breasts.

"You are happy. That makes me happy too. So – do continue. Were you found out?"

"We were never found out. The minor canon won a promotion to Canterbury shortly after I took over the choir. She left with him."

"And that was the end of it. Did you love her?"

"I thought so, for a while. I entertained foolish thoughts of leaving Cloisterham with her. Such nonsense, in retrospect."

"Yet that is what you have done with me."

"You are different."

"I am not another man's wife. Though I almost was. So she was your only love? Oh, you are looking shifty! There is more, I can tell. You will not meet my eyes."

"All right. I was in the habit, until I met you – when it stopped altogether and immediately – of paying occasional calls on a widow of the diocese."

"A widow!"

"A young widow. Her husband was killed in a carriage accident."

"Oh, I remember that! Four, five years ago?"

"Yes, well, she was lonely and so was I. We met to discuss funeral music and after that she always sought me out after services until eventually…an invitation was issued."

"She was in mourning! John, you seem entirely without scruple!"

"No, she was no longer in mourning. This occurred over the course of two years."

"And it continued until…"

"That dinner at my lodgings. That fateful night. The very next day I had to tell her I would no longer be paying calls."

"Goodness, John. I am getting more used to calling you John now, have you noticed? You are quite the…man of the world, aren't you? I had no idea these things happened in Cloisterham."

"Oh, Rosebud, these things happen the world over. And now I have you, and they will happen no more."

"What did you say to her? When you ended your liaison?"

"You do not need to know, Rosa."

"No. But I am grateful for your honesty. And not at all as horrified by it as I feel I should be."

"That's as well. Young men are no better than dogs really. We none of us deserve you."

I laid my head on his shoulder, thoughtful. I rather felt for that widow. I hoped she would meet somebody congenial, quickly.

"And how are you?" He patted the sheet above my, well, what should I call it? Kitty Mason calls it her _commodity_. She is so disgusting.

"I am well, that is to say, a little uncomfortable, er, below."

Now he had drawn my attention to it, I was strongly aware of matted hair and a kind of thick viscous substance that clung.

"Do you think somebody would draw me a bath?"

"I am sure they would." He slid a leg out of the bed and reached for his clothes. "I will ask."

He dressed and left me alone in the bed. I could not resist touching myself between my legs. How inflamed it felt. I was deflowered, by him. The thought made me throw my head back in a rapture of possession.

That there had been women before me did not trouble me in the slightest. There was so much satisfaction in the thought that I had been the one to halt him in his licentious tracks, though I was sure I had no idea how I'd done it. There was nothing wonderful and breathtaking about me, as far as I could ascertain.

When Jasper came back into the room, he told me that the bath was ready, the bathroom being at the end of our landing. Not wishing to dress again only to undress, I wrapped myself in the top blanket and followed him to where welcoming steam issued forth.

I expected him to show me in and then take his leave, but he followed me into the room then shut and bolted the door.

"What are you about?" I asked suspiciously, pulling my blanket wrap tighter.

"This bath is a reasonable size," he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling in devilish amusement. "Do you not think it might accommodate two?"

"Oh, John Jasper! What will the landlord think!"

"Why should the landlord know? Come, take that off and step into the water."

The hot bath was a wonderful comfort in the otherwise frigid room. I threw off the blanket and dipped in my toe. It was almost too hot, but better than standing naked in the icy air. When I sat down, the warmth eased my deep-seated ache, flowing around the torn and used parts like healing balm.

How quickly I had grown used to being seen naked. I made no attempt to cover myself, even when Jasper knelt by the side of the bath and began removing such pins as remained, after the earlier hurly-burly, from my hair.

"There," he said as my curls coiled into the waters depth. "You are a water sprite. Or a mermaid."

"A fish's tail would not be convenient."

He laughed. He still looked like a man who could not believe his luck, who might be awoken any moment from his dream.

"Indeed it would not," he murmured, dipping his fingers into the water and swirling it around my breasts.

"Are you going to join me in here? Or are you not?"

With the broadest of smiles he rose to his feet and began unbuttoning.

"I knew this of you," he said, taking off his waistcoat. "I knew that, beneath your perfectly ladylike exterior, there would be a creature of rare passion. I thought I would find it in your music, but I know now that you were saving it for your lover."

"My lover. Oh, how exquisite that I should have such a thing! But are you saying that I am wanton, Mr Jasper?" I rested my head on the lip of the bath and let the water lap over my pale breasts. All of me was different now – my whole body, transformed.

He undressed with deft rapidity, looking down at me all the while.

"Not wanton. Not in the sense of being indiscriminate with your favours. But you have a natural inclination towards the sensual, the physical. It is what I saw when I first met you. And your preference for the musical Romantics – that also fitted with what I perceived of you."

"Then you knew me better than I knew myself, for I thought myself to be cold and endeavoured to repel all amorous advances."

He came into the bath, nudging me forward so that I had to settle back into his arms, my back against his stomach.

"Oh, my love, that was no more than fear," he said, taking a block of soap from the dish and lathering it up.

"I said as much to Helena. Dear Lord, I had no idea how to interpret my own feelings. I spent all my time wanting to hide from them."

He applied soapy hands to my belly and breasts and shoulder-blades, skimming over my wet skin. My nipples began to grow and harden under his touch.

"I know," he said, kissing my ear, then my neck. "I must say, I expected the pursuit of you to be much more arduous than it was. I was prepared to wage a campaign that could take years."

"You would have lost interest."

"Oh, I would not. You surely cannot think that."

His thumbs rotated, making deep circles in my neck until I thought my bones should melt.

"You do seem rather…single-minded…"

"I would have stopped at nothing to have you," he said, to himself, it seemed. "Even…"

His hands were about my neck now, the pressure becoming less pleasurable as it intensified.

"Even what?"

He relaxed his hands and the tension in my throat lifted.

"It does not matter. I have you now. Here."

He moved his hands lower, manipulating me until I knelt facing him. He kissed me with steam-wet lips while his hand, holding the soap, sought my nether regions, washing them clean of him. His touch was miraculous, making me want him again, despite the memory of the pain. He had enslaved me, but I didn't resent it any more. I embraced my subjection, sought it out, wished for it always.

"I hope," I whispered, taking my lips from his, "it shall always be like this."

"It can be," he said. "It will be."

His hand moved lazily between those under-lips, swishing water around the oval bud at their centre.

_My commodity_.

"What is this called?" I wondered aloud.

"What is…?" He tried to push a fingertip into me, behind, but it was still too painful and I gasped.

"_That_. That, that you have just tried to… What is its name? I have no word in my vocabulary for it."

"I wouldn't go about mentioning it in general conversation, Rosy."

"I do not mean to do that," I said, flicking water at him. "I am curious."

"I have noticed. Well, there are many clinical Latin terms for the different parts. Then there are the words the choristers use."

"The choristers do not discuss such things!"

"Oh, indeed they do, Rosebud, and rather avidly at that. When they think I do not hear them. Though I was little better myself at that age."

"And what words do they use? Oh, John Jasper, why are you being so coy? It is simply an arrangement of letters. I shall not faint away at the sound of them. I am a married woman, you know."

"Yes, I know that." He clutched at the body part in question, holding it in a possessive grip. "I know it very well. I will tell you the one that is the least harsh or unpleasant to the ear, then."

"Good. What is it?"

He bent his lips to my ear. His finger tickled the narrow groove he was about to name, up and down, most tantalisingly.

"Quim," he whispered.

"Oh, that is quite nice! I like words that begin with Q. They have a pleasant, harmonious sound. It is much better than commodity."

He snorted into my ear. "Who calls it that?"

"Kitty Mason, a nuns' girl."

"She sounds as if she has an interesting future ahead of her. Come, now I have cleaned your commodity, I have a wish to make closer inspection of it. Let's return to our room."

I was loth to leave the beautifully warm water, but the promise of the beautifully warm bed and the even warmer body of my beloved helped me find the will to do so.

Wrapped in towels, we made a swift crossing back to our bedroom, locking the door behind us. Jasper had me naked in a second, picking me up and throwing me on to the mattress. I squealed with breathless excitement, diving laughingly under the covers, but he tore them aside and commandeered my writhing form without apparent effort, pinning me to the bed with ruthless efficiency.

I saw that his manhood stood proud and erect once more and I took a fearful breath, trying to twist my hips away from it.

"It is still not ready…" I said. Somehow I couldn't say the word _quim_.

"Don't fret," he said, kissing each of my nipples in turn. The kisses tracked downward, from between my breasts, over my stomach, to the damp curly hair beneath. "What I have in mind won't hurt you."

"What do you have in mind?" I managed to ask the question despite the increasing difficulty of speech, caused by his lips, his mouth, his tongue, drifting over that private triangle. I tried to pinch my thighs shut but he held them open. I felt hot breath on my lower lips, which were already wet from the bath and from something else, something produced by my own excitement. He spread them wide with his thumbs and I blushed madly, knowing him to be examining that most intimate of spots.

"Oh." I moaned when he kissed my inner thighs, high up, at the crease. What manner of behaviour was this? How had John Jasper learnt his lewd tricks? I already knew the answer to that, of course, but my mind floated, half-delirious.

Keeping the folds parted with his thumbs, he breathed again, right on the central bud, making it warm up and glow. I was in thrall, aware that he would only need to keep breathing like that to bring me close to that swandive of pure pleasure he had previously induced.

"Oh, what…?" I gasped brokenly. "Oh, you cannot…"

The tip of his tongue curled wickedly inside my spread lips and traced an upward path, past the fat bud, up to the top then down the other side. He circled in this manner several times, and the inexorable firmness of it, coupled with the breath which still fell on my most sensitive spot, soon set me to arching my back and moaning.

"Mm," he said, and to feel his voice just there was quite startling, a vibration that, low as it was, set off the beginnings of a quake. He let go of my thighs, which could not now shut with his head placed between them and put his hands behind them, upon my buttocks, spreading the cheeks a little to open me still further.

"Ah," I panted, "this cannot…"

"Yes it can," he said, with absolute authority. All I could do was yield. "Keep still."

Now he set to lapping at me with the flat of his tongue, licking and pushing it into every crevice while his thumbs pressed themselves into the crease between my buttocks. I thought my body might start to rise into the air of its own accord with the force of the impending crisis.

The leftover sting inside me was forgotten, washed over, swept away by the whirlpool of divine sensation wrought by Jasper's tongue. He knew exactly where and how to lick, exactly how to build the sweetness until it could go nowhere else but implode within me.

I began to sob. It was too much. It was coming and I could not help myself. John Jasper had me so completely in his power it didn't seem _fair_.

A final breath, a lap of his tongue, the spreadness, the openness of my vulnerable quim, it all swirled together and I whimpered long and helplessly, letting the enormity of it claim me.

He worked me with his tongue all the way through it, only releasing me when my last piteous cry cracked in my throat. I now understood the phrase _I am undone._

I was. Completely and utterly undone, more than any woman had ever been.

He raised his head from between my legs, observing my quivering, limp form. The smile on his lips almost savage.

"My Rosebud," he said. "You know you could never be another man's. When you give me your pleasure, you give me the greatest gift you could bestow. You give me yourself. You cannot take it back from me now."

"I can never be free of you," I agreed, sinking, heavy-limbed, into the mattress. "I am yours."

He stroked my cheek.

"Yes," he said, "you are."

**Jasper continues to make his case for the title of Mr Intense 1846. I'd give it to him. And then some… Maybe some more plot next time, but maybe just more smut. I haven't decided yet.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

Such a night it was. We lay together, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake, always connected at some point or another. We spent long hours in exploration of each other's bodies, in finding and understanding how best to stimulate or grant pleasure. He showed me how I should touch him, how I should awaken that great beast and how, once aroused, it should be appeased.

Time was suspended for that long, sweet night and there was nothing to think about outside ourselves and our new discoveries. His hands on me, and his lips on mine, these were the only things that mattered.

As the first light of morning crept into the room, I felt myself ready to take him again, fully, and I guided his shaft down towards my channel while he raised his head from the kiss we were engaged in and murmured, "You are sure?"

"I want to," I whispered. "I want to know what it's like without the pain."

At first there was a rawness, a residual sting, but the flow of my own pleasure soon turned it into a divine friction. He entered me with considerate slowness, but I revelled in every new inch, astonished at what it seemed I could accept.

"How is that?" he asked, once I was full and stretched almost beyond imagining.

"Good. It is good. It still hurts a little, but not so much." I put my arms around his neck and lifted my leg a little, making space for him.

"Hold tight," he breathed, and he moved into a languid rhythm, pulling back and then thrusting. Despite the pangs, it was a most interesting and, increasingly, enjoyable sensation. Somehow, each back and forth motion crossed some threshold of ineffable pleasure, I knew not how, and I found myself responding by pushing myself on to him all the harder, beset with a primitive, animal need for him.

We toiled on, our breaths mingling, panting, our mouths clashing, our hands seizing and grabbing. I rose to a point beyond that nag of pain, where it became irrelevant and small compared to the ever-heightening path to pleasure I found myself on.

With my body I urged him on, needing him to take me harder. He required little encouragement in this and soon his thrusts were so mighty that he pushed me up the bed a little more with each one until I hit the headboard – mercifully padded.

"You can take this, Rosebud," he said between gritted teeth, but I was not sure it was meant for a question or a statement.

I answered all the same. "Yes. Oh yes. Oh please."

We were beyond ourselves, all elemental, creatures of our desires, and yet there was still so much love in it. So much love that he put his hand down between my legs and touched my pearl, just as the coiled spring of my mounting rapture unwound to unleash a flood of ecstatic intensity, the like of which made my earlier melting pleasures seem as nothing.

I sighed it out, almost in a panic, while he watched my face, holding it in his hand, not letting me look away. And then his own face transfigured with something that looked almost like fear and he spent his last few thrusts before bringing his head gently to rest on my shoulder.

"Oh, Rosebud," he said, wrapping me up in him. Contented, I burrowed into his arms, my place in the universe found at last. "You are made for me."

"And you for me," I told him.

The light, cold and crepuscular, threw shadows on the floor. It had to be eight o'clock now, at least. What did our future hold? What would we do next?

I did not want to think about it, did not want to ever rise from this bed, but little wisps of fear and dread curled about the edges of my warm satiety, making me wish to cling to John Jasper for dear life.

"Should you like breakfast?" he said eventually. "We must prepare to leave."

"Oh, must we go?" I heaved a sigh. "Cannot we stay here in this bed for the remainder of our lives."

Fondly he kissed my face all over, ending at my lips.

"Nothing would suit me more," he said. "But we must try to get back to London for nightfall."

"Oh, why?" Dirty, dark and smoky London held no appeal for me, even if I did return to it as Mrs Jasper.

"If I am to find a new situation, I should start making overtures this week."

"You really mean to leave Cloisterham?"

"I imagine we may have to, Rosy. Elopement is generally frowned upon, especially in ecclesiastical circles. Do you know, if I were ordained, I could be transported for this."

"No! Truly?"

"Truly. But I am not, so there is nothing to fear, except the weight of opprobrium."

"How heavy will the weight be, John? I am afraid to face it."

"Oh, nobody will blame you, my love." He smiled grimly and sat up. "It's my blood they'll be after."

"Then they cannot have it," I said determinedly.

"I'm sure we will weather the storm, but you see why I am anxious to find a new situation before it breaks."

"Yes." I grimaced. "Just…London."

He brought my head to rest on his shoulder, encircling me with an arm.

"As long as we are together, even London can be borne, can't it?" he said.

I smiled up at him and nodded.

By the time we stopped kissing, it was even later, and departure was unavoidable.

We washed, dressed and breakfasted quickly before setting off back to Carlisle. The coach trip was most uncomfortable, and yet it was deliciously so, because every jolt and stone in the road awoke my tingling nether regions afresh, reminding me of what had passed since we last took the trip. If I throbbed and felt bruised below, it was for his sake, who sat beside me, holding my hand, letting my head rest against him. My husband.

At Carlisle, Jasper found a stationers and bought notepaper, envelopes and suchlike before making for the station.

"We have letters to write," he said. "It's best to get them sent as soon as we can." While we waited for the London train, we sat in a hotel near the station and frowned over our communications.

For his part, he meant to write to the Dean of Cloisterham – a businesslike affair mentioning only his recent change in circumstances. A more informative missive to the Reverend Crisparkle would also be sent, as well as…oh dear. Somebody would have to tell Edwin. He thought it would best come from him.

As for me, I had three letters to write as well. The first one was easy enough.

'_Dear Miss Twinkleton_

_I write in sincere apology for all the worry and trouble my sudden departure must have put you to. If I could have thought of another way of doing things, I would, but my situation was quite impossible and flight seemed the only option._

_As things stand now, I must inform you that I will not be returning to your care, because I am recently married, in Scotland, and will therefore make my home with my husband from now onwards._

_I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the kindness you have shown me these last ten years. I will remember it always and hope we can remain on friendly terms, despite what must seem like shocking ingratitude now._

_Your most affectionate and respectful friend_

_Rosa Jasper (nee Bud)_'

I looked up from this to see Jasper sealing the envelope intended for the Dean.

"May I see?" he asked, and I gave him the letter to approve, which he did, with a nod and a slightly anxious smile.

"I wonder how these shall be received," I said. "Now I must write to Mr Grewgious. He will not be happy."

"You should make sure he knows that you are well and happy. So long as that is the case, he has nothing with which to reproach himself."

"Do you think I should mention releasing my inheritance?"

"Perhaps not yet. We can pay him a visit while we are in town and discuss it then. For now, I think the reassurance that you are alive and that nothing worse than marriage has befallen you should suffice."

"I do not look forward to that visit," I said with a grimace.

"We shall survive it, my love. Mr Grewgious will not be happy with me, but he will forgive you straightaway, I am sure."

"I hope you are right."

I put pen to paper again.

"_Dear Mr Grewgious_

_You may have been told by now that I have left the Nuns' House and Cloisterham. I hope the hue and cry has not been too great, because I can happily inform you that no harm has come to me and I am perfectly well and safe._

_I am the bearer of news which, on my behalf, is the best and happiest I could ever impart. I hope you will be able to share in some part of my happiness, however small, when I tell you that I am now a married woman, the wife of John Jasper, after a wedding conducted in Gretna Green._

_I know this will not be the most welcome news to you, having forbidden the match yourself, but please be reassured that the choice was freely made by me and I am absolutely of a mind that it was the right thing to do._

_Mr Jasper and I love one another, and that is all that counts to us. I hope in time it will come to count to you as well._

_Please consider me always your affectionate and respectful ward_

_Rosa Jasper (nee Bud)_'

I took a deep breath and laid down the pen. Jasper was scribbling furiously at his letter to Rev. Crisparkle, whose intercessions on our behalf he hoped to gain.

"Do you think he will help us?"

"I hope so. We are old friends. I know he didn't approve to begin with, but I'm counting on his seeing beyond the immediate scandal and applying some of his Christian spirit of forgiveness to us."

"Do you think we deserve to be forgiven?"

"We have done nothing wrong."

I wanted to believe it.

I turned instead to my third letter. Helena. All this letter-writing had forced me back into the real world, and contemplation of this was not good for my mood. I hated to think of what might await us back in Cloisterham. All at once I felt a torrent of remorse for not having said anything to Helena at least. I was not worthy of her friendship. She had every reason to cut me dead forever more.

_"Dearest Friend_

_When I think of the fears my leaving the Nuns' House must have aroused in you, I wonder that I can live with myself. I have no excuse for it, Helena, but I do have an explanation. One that you can perhaps divine._

_You, of all people, knew how love overwhelmed and occluded my senses at Christmas. That love could not be denied, no matter how those around us tried to, and Mr Jasper and I decided that no other course was open to us than elopement. To wait four years was unendurable and cruel._

_I wish I had left you a note, but I was so afraid that we would be followed and deterred from our course. I hope you will understand that I acted out of love for John rather than disregard for you._

_At the time of writing I am in Carlisle waiting for the train to take us back to London, where we will stay a few days. By the 13th inst we will be back in Cloisterham and, oh, Helena, we shall be so desperately in need of a friend. I hope and pray you can provide that comfort to me, as I would to you, in all circumstances._

_Seeing you again will make all the disagreeableness so much easier to bear._

_I must end now, as our train will soon be here._

_Always your affectionate_

_Rosa._"

The writing of this had strung tight my emotions, so that I was quiet and somewhat heavy-hearted when I accompanied Jasper to the post office, en route to the station.

"What did you say to Edwin?" I whispered, once we had handed the envelopes over and paid for the stamps.

Jasper did not seem any more vocal on the subject than I was. He simply shook his head, with a distant look in his eye.

"I thought it best to stick to simple facts," he said, once we were on the platform. "I did not seek forgiveness or understanding. I told him we were married and we hoped to receive him as a friend in time."

I bit the inside of my cheek, recalling what that preposterous man at Gretna Green had said about a duel. I did not think Eddy the sort for duelling, but one never knew.

The train arrived in its cloak of white steam and we boarded, ready for the long journey, or at least, as ready as we would ever be.

"What shall we do in London? Where shall we stay?"

"We must find lodgings for tonight, and tomorrow I intend to call on a friend and perhaps avail myself of his hospitality."

"What friend?"

"A former cathedral chorister, who joined at the same time as I did. He is now organist at Southwark Cathedral."

"But what is his name?"

"Oh, Richardson. Charles Richardson. He has a wife, Matilda. Tilly. He may know of vacant posts around London and the home counties, or at least he may be able to point me in the right direction to make enquiries."

"The future is so uncertain," I said, dispirited.

He put his arm around me. Nobody else in the carriage batted an eyelid. We were married. The ring on my finger said so.

"You must not fret, Rosebud. It will make no difference to anything. We will find our niche and all will be well."

"I hope our niche isn't some freezing railway arch, sleeping under newspaper."

He exhaled sharply, not best pleased with my remark.

"You have so little faith in me?"

His arm was stiff, clamping my shoulder too tightly. I had offended his manly pride, it seemed.

"No, John. I do have faith in you. It is the rest of humanity I take issue with."

"You have nothing to fear."

The words were spoken with authority and I allowed myself to be reassured. I was too tired to dispute it, at any rate, and I settled in for my second long sleep in a railway carriage of the week.

We found an inexpensive, clean hotel near the station, left our bags there and went to eat at a chop house on the corner. All the noise and light and constant to-ing and fro-ing of people distracted me and I couldn't concentrate on Jasper or anything. There were strong smells of cooking and liquor, and strong words exchanged at some of the other tables. My nerves jangled and I felt out of place and under threat.

"I do not like it here," I said.

"I wish I could take you to fine restaurants," he said, furrowing his brow. "You will have to understand, Rosa, that I am not a rich man. Wherever we end up, our living will have to be a quiet one. We will not be budgeting for balls or lavish parties."

"Oh, I do not care so much about that," I said, though a tiny part of me did. "But I do want the air we breathe to be clean. London is so unhealthy. One almost sees the diseases festering everywhere."

"As I have said, we need not live in London. There are many places in the countryside beyond." His tone, intended to be patient, was testy. "I did think that perhaps London might suit you because it contains such a variety of entertainments, many of which cost nothing."

"Shall we really be so poor? What about my inheritance?"

"If I do not have the gatehouse or some similar lodging granted as part of my post, all of that will go on rent. Perhaps there may be some small amount left over, but not enough to keep a carriage."

"Oh." This truly was something of a shock. As Jasper's wife, I had not expected to be wealthy, but it had not occurred to me that we might be actually poor.

"I will find work," he said, his face serious, almost melancholy. "You may count on my earning enough to keep you. You and…anyone else…"

Oh dear God! What if we had children? What if even now…?

The thought was like a thunderbolt. Why had I not considered this before? I was not ready to be a mother. I was barely capable of accepting that I was a wife yet.

I stared at the chops and mashed potatoes on my plate with nauseous dismay. The enchantment of our hotel bed in Scotland was such a long way from this bleak and dirty reality that I wanted to weep.

"Rosebud." He sounded almost angry with me.

I twisted my hands in my lap.

"Forgive me, John. But I'm afraid."

A lump grew in my throat and I felt, with an exhausted resignation, the onset of tears. It just seemed too hard to have to grow up this quickly, with so little in the way of transition. To go from a privileged, cossetted schoolgirl to a wife who may well have to wash her own linens in some soot-caked terrace was too large a step to be taken all at once like this.

"You are over-tired," he said, more gently. "Will you not take something, at least?"

"I seem to have lost my appetite."

"What kind of husband would I be if I let you fade away to nothing? Come, you must eat."

He reached over with his own knife and fork and cut a piece of meat, putting it to my lips until I had to open them and take the morsel. I blushed and made sure nobody watched us, half-embarrassed but also half-heartened. His solicitude warmed me and drove away some of the terrors. If I had nothing else, at least I had this man, who loved me.

"Whatever worries you have," he said, repeating the action with some potato, "you may be sure of this. You will be well taken care of, always, and in every respect. I will never give you cause to regret your marriage."

Back at the hotel, as we lay in bed and he made a move to kiss me, I ducked away from him.

"John," I said.

"Do you not want to?"

"I do. But might it not be imprudent…?"

"How so?"

I did not know how to express it. I did not want to state in bald terms that I didn't want children. It seemed so indelicate.

"When you paid calls on your widow," I whispered.

He gazed down at me, frowning. "You said you would not speak of it again," he reminded.

"I know, I know, but…how did you prevent any…unwanted consequences?"

He blinked, seeming confused for a moment, then his face relaxed and he stroked my hair from my brow.

"I see. You are worried you will conceive?"

I nodded, screwing my face up in what I hoped approximated an apologetic expression.

"Ah. Well. There are ways and means."

"There are?"

"Although, you know, you may already have…"

"I know. I didn't think of it then. But now I fear I will not be ready and…"

"Hush, calm, now. There's no need to get upset. I understand your reluctance. It is wise. We should wait, after all."

"But I don't want to wait…for you." I glanced coyly down at his manhood. His smile broadened.

"You will not have to. When do you next expect...?"

He paused. I waited. He wanted me to end the sentence for him, I perceived, but I had not caught his meaning.

"Your monthly…?" he continued.

"Oh!" Light dawned. I could barely meet his eye. "I see what you mean. Well, let me think…I'm not quite sure. I suppose it must be…quite soon. Perhaps in the next few days. Perhaps around the time we return to Cloisterham."

"Then that is well," he said. "You are past the time when you might have risked conception."

"Are you sure?"

"I learnt from experts, my love."

"Your secret lovers!"

"Indeed."

I propped myself on my elbows, putting up my face to be kissed, and he was only too happy to oblige.

Our kisses turned to more, so soon, so swiftly. The mattress creaked and outside, the railway hissed and clanked, but nothing could deter us from our course once we were set on it. We rolled around until I was astride him and he held me at my hips and the back of my neck, keeping me locked in a kiss while he moved my tender quim closer and closer to the tip of his shaft.

Already he had used his fingers to take me to a pitch of wetness and desire, stopping just short of allowing that sweet release, which he told me would have to come only with him inside me.

I lowered myself, greatly impressed by my daring, on to that great prong, letting it in eagerly, though its girth was such that I had to be slow and careful, protecting my delicate passageway. He twitched it further forward, bucking his pelvis up, joining with me so that we inched towards each other, a mutual journey of need.

"There," he gasped. "There, yes. You will feel it keenly in this position." He moved his hands down to my buttocks and held on to them, so that I felt him more deeply within me.

I was able to guide myself to the point of greatest pleasure, riding slowly up and down. Sometimes he let go of my bottom to grasp at my breasts, and sometimes I bent so low that my nipples grazed him and he was able to take one in his mouth and suck it. The carnival of sensations was quite extraordinary, and I wondered how long I could keep it going before one or both of us came to our rapturous end.

Quite soon I felt my muscles contract as that first shudder came upon me. Jasper, who had been urging me onward with little moans of 'Yes' and 'God', moved one hand around my buttock and slid it into the crease, pushing hard and surprisingly against the tight-shut opening there.

My eyes flew wide open and, oh my goodness, it made such a difference, it made everything ten times more vivid and unstoppable and overpowering. I rather fear I may have screamed.

My own expression of wild pleasure covered Jasper's more moderate ejaculation. He even put a hand over my mouth, half-laughing in the midst of his own release.

"Heavens, Rosebud," he said, helping me dismount. "People will think I am murdering you."

"Why did you do that?" I panted. "What you did? Is that normal?"

"Didn't you like it?"

"I didn't say that, but it was so…unexpected."

"Well, next time it won't be, will it?"

"You know a good deal too much about the arts of pleasure, Mr Jasper."

"One cannot know _too much_ about those."

"I feel I should disapprove."

"You didn't sound very disapproving."

"Oh, don't tease me! You are a beast."

"I know, I know." He kissed my forehead. "We should sleep. There is much to be done tomorrow."

Even in my delicious post-coital warmth and sleepiness, the words hit home.

Reality. It could not be avoided for much longer.


	11. Chapter 11

I sat on the bed, mouth downturned, hands clasped together in my lap.

Jasper was saying some words I didn't want to hear. As he spoke them, he tied his cravat, something I had not yet tired of watching. It had the irritating effect of displacing some of my annoyance and replacing it with desire. Even though my desire had already been quite effectively sated before breakfast.

"You cannot leave me here," I said again. "I do not like to be alone in this strange place."

"Rosa, I've already said I'll come back to collect you once I've seen Charles. Unless we want to spend the next few days in this dingy bolthole, I need to approach him with tact and discretion. Turning up on his doorstep with a surprise spouse and a clutter of baggage will not do."

"But you said he was your friend."

He turned from the mirror and reached for his coat, glancing over at me with his mouth firmly set.

"He is my friend, and I anticipate that he will extend an invitation to both of us to stay with him until our return to Cloisterham. But it would be presumptuous of me to spring the situation upon him without first giving him an explanation, man to man."

"But what am I to do?"

"I won't be long, my love. Read my book, if you like."

I picked it up from the nightstand, wrinkling my nose.

"_Stages on Life's Way _by Søren Kierkegaard. Is it a romance?"

He smiled, taking his greatcoat and buttoning it to the chin.

"They will give you a newspaper if you ask in the lobby."

"I don't want a newspaper. I want to come with you."

"You have my answer."

"I could wait in the cab while you―"

"No." He crossed the room and bent to kiss me, taking hold of my stiff, unco-operative arms as he did so. "I promise, I shall not be longer than two hours at the most."

"Two hours." I wrenched my arms from him and turned to lie face down on the bed.

He laughed, infuriatingly.

"Such extremity of despair over a wait of two hours, Rosebud. You would never have lasted four years, would you? Now, keep to the room and don't answer the door to anyone. I shall be back before you know it."

I didn't say goodbye, or rise from the bed, but maintained my icy silence until the door closed behind him.

Once I could no longer hear the tread of his boots on the stairs, I went to the window, looking down into the street below. It was busy and somewhat icy. People tried to hurry, but their progress was frequently impaired by slips and slides. The roads would not be easy for the horses today. Unease crept into me, worry about some accident befalling Jasper, like the one that had carried off the widow's husband.

I saw him hold on to the railing as he negotiated the steps, hurrying towards a nearby hansom cab with his arm aloft. It was odd to see him down in the street, separate from me, swallowed up by the world. I felt forlorn and alone, deserted by him.

He climbed into the cab and the horses made a slow, careful pull away from the kerb, heading south to this other cathedral. As the vehicle rounded a corner, I felt a dreadful dragging sensation at my heart, as if I might never see him again.

So affecting was this dread that I could barely decide whether to sit or stand or pace about the room. O, I should have said goodbye to him. I should at least have given him some sweet word of parting. And now we had left on horrid terms and…

I put my face in my hands and tried to breathe, the very same breathing exercises he had made me repeat every week at the Nuns' House. I had hardly imagined they would ever be useful for anything, but they helped my blood to settle and my mind to ease somewhat.

My fears turned back to pique. Why had he left me here? It was not fair. Was I really to sit here in this narrow, mean room for two hours – probably more – while he enjoyed high humour and bonhomie with his old friend?

I would find my own amusement. Looking again through the window, I thought that the lively district of Oxford Street and Regent Street lay just a street or two away. Eddy had once told me of a marvellous place, a bazaar called the Pantheon, where many interesting and wonderful things could be seen and purchased. He had said it was close by Oxford Street.

I did not hesitate. I laced my boots and took my cloak and was down the stairs before my conscience or my better sense could interfere with my decision.

Outside it was terribly cold, but I enjoyed the stimulation to my nerves, and I skittered along with everyone else, just one anonymous girl in the crowds. It was rather a liberating feeling when one compared it with Cloisterham, where every second person tipped their hat to me or offered a word of greeting.

The pleasant anonymity did not last very long, though, for I found myself the frequent target of ribald remarks by passing men of low character, and some by women!

London, I perceived, was a coarse and shrieking kind of place, but there was also gallantry and gentility to leaven it.

The Pantheon was indeed quite marvellous. It was entered by a little passageway beside a tailor's shop, and inside one could quite easily lose oneself in the maze of counters and alleys. Looking upwards, I could see a gallery area where people were seated, watching the perambulations of the customers below. Just a little further on was a precious conservatory, full of flowers and plants, where goldfish and even a macaw could be seen. I wandered through this commercial wonderland, forgetful now of my ill humour, caught up in the novel sights and sounds around me.

I had picked up a tuning fork at a bric-a-brac stall, wondering if I might buy it as a peace offering to Jasper on his return, when I heard my name called from the gallery.

"Rosa! Hie! Rosa Bud!"

I dropped the tuning fork with a clatter and glanced up in heartfelt dismay.

For the voice belonged to a gentleman with a head of bright blond hair, in an expensively cut blue suit.

I turned at once and hastened away, searching desperately for the exit to the streets outside, but the place was a veritable labyrinth and I found myself, to my horror, bumping straight into Eddy in front of a stall selling spice nuts.

"It _is_ you!" he exclaimed.

"Oh dear." I wrung my hands, looking about me for means of escape and finding none.

"Whatever are you doing here, Pussy? Are you up to see Grewgious?"

I made no reply.

"Well, now we have so fortuitously met, come upstairs and I'll stand you a pot of tea. Come on. Let's bury the hatchet and toast a new beginning."

He had no inkling of what had passed since he left Cloisterham – that much was cause for some relief.

"You consider we have a hatchet to bury?" I said tentatively, following him up some fancy wrought-iron steps.

"I am sorry I left Cloisterham in such haste at Christmas. I hope you did not fret over it."

We sat down by the railings, able to look over and watch the ebb and flow of top hats and bonnets, cloth caps and shawls.

"I presumed you were more upset than I realised, over the broken engagement."

"I was in a bit of a stew over it, I cannot deny. I've had time to let things settle, though, and I'm over the worst. So, dear _sister_, let me pour you some tea."

"You're sweeter than I deserve," I said, biting my lip. "You have had no word from Cloisterham…since then?"

"No, indeed, and I do think Uncle Jack might have written! He is usually such an assiduous correspondent, yet I have heard nothing since, heavens, I think it was the day after Boxing Day. I hope he is not ill. Is he ill, Pussy?"

He looked so haunted, real anxiety in his trusting eyes.

"No," I said, grimacing at the strength of the tea. "No, he is well."

"But you have not told me what you are doing in town. I thought a spectre walked among us when I saw you down below."

"Oh…I…Mr Grewgious…"

"Has our…disengagement…created legal difficulties?"

I fumbled with the teacup and removed my gloves without thinking. Gloves he had bought me.

The glint of my wedding ring almost blinded me with the implication of my ill-considered gesture.

Edwin stared.

"You wear a ring…on your…it is a wedding ring…but it's not possible…"

He looked up at me, wreathed in confusion.

I pushed back my chair.

"Eddy, I cannot stay. I shall be late."

"Late for what? Late for _whom?_"

"I am sorry, I must go."

Grabbing the gloves, I made the quickest path I could to the staircase, but the place heaved with humanity and I had to push and shove in a most unladylike fashion, Edwin at my heels.

"Rosy!" he shouted after me. "Come back and explain what has happened. Are you married? Did you throw me over for another fellow? Tell me his name and I'll kill him!"

Mortifying clusters of people stopped to stare and spectate as we whirled through the passages, faster and faster.

At one point, just as he almost caught me, a group of gentlemen stopped him and demanded to know what the devil he thought he was doing, molesting a young lady.

Gratefully I made good my advantage and emerged on to the outside streets, picking a path through the treacherous ice and cantering carriages to the street where the hotel was situated. But, at the corner, I noticed that Edwin pursued me once more, calling my name more urgently than before.

I skidded up the street, and halfway to the hotel I saw Jasper coming out of it, looking around him with a countenance that mingled anger and dread to bloodcurdling effect. At the foot of the steps he halted, spying me in the crowd, and I saw his fears turn to relief, palpably crossing his face as I ran towards him.

"Where have you been? I have come looking for you," he said, putting out his arms to catch me as I flew, half-skating, across the pavement.

But before I could warn him, Eddy was upon us, pulling up with flushed and disbelieving face.

"Ned," said Jasper, sepulchrally low.

The silence was like the fall of an axe.

Eddy could do no more than stare. Jasper held me by my arms, his fingers pressing into me. I trembled in his grasp.

"Am I to understand…?" said Eddy hoarsely, once every last vestige of colour had drained from his face.

"Rosa, go inside," said Jasper, releasing my arms and sending me away with a little nudge between my shoulder blades.

"I do not like to," I said, standing my ground. "I want to stay."

"You _will_ obey me in this, if in nothing else today." He raised his voice and flung his arm dramatically towards the hotel door so that I was too intimidated to too anything but scamper up the steps. I did not go up to the room, though, but lurked instead at the top of the steps, fearful of what might ensue.

"Ned, will you come with me to the corner house and discuss this like gentlemen?"

"Like gentlemen? You! What gentleman would…would…pluck his own nephew's sweetheart from under his nose and…you dog! You utter dog!"

"Edwin, you make a spectacle of us, come away now and let us…"

"It is _you_ who makes the spectacle. The spectacle of a thieving, black-hearted rogue, Sir. Are you actually married? Did you actually marry my Rosa? Or perhaps you have simply seduced her and run away with her, away from the consequences of your wickedness? Well, I can provide those consequences, Jack. I shall provide them, you may count on it."

"Ned, calm yourself."

"Do not 'Ned' me! As if you were worthy of my confidence and friendship. You are false and treacherous. And as for her…"

"Speak ill of her, Ned, and I shall have no alternative but to…"

"She is no better than a common floozy!"

I screamed as Jasper floored Edwin, rather effortlessly it seemed, with a well-judged blow to the nose.

Running back down to the street, I saw Edwin sitting on the pavement, groaning, one hand over his bloodied nose, while Jasper poured forth a tirade of astonishing invective, accusing him of being spoilt, selfish, arrogant and a great host of other things to boot.

"I am sorry," he said, once his venom had been exhausted and Edwin had started to weep. "Truly sorry for the way this has ended our lifelong attachment. Perhaps I deserve your hatred, God knows you have earned mine. But if I ever hear that you have spoken vilely of my wife again, you will not recover so well from my resulting retribution. You will not recover from it at all."

It sounded rather like a threat of murder to me. A woman in the small crowd that had gathered took my arm and pulled me back.

"Come away, dearie. He's got a nasty temper on 'im, by the looks of things. Don't let him turn it on you."

"Oh, he wouldn't. But poor Eddy…"

"Least he was defending your honour," she said. "Newlyweds, are you?"

But the last thing on my mind was polite chit-chat. Eddy had struggled to his feet and was jabbing his finger at Jasper, overwrought with emotion and humiliation.

"I'll see you rot in hell," he sobbed.

I broke away from the woman and laid my hand on Jasper's wrist.

"Please stop this now," I urged. "It is done."

He tore his eyes away from Edwin and gave me a look that made me shiver from the crown of my head to my toes. For one instant, I thought he might hurt me.

But instead he took my hand, swivelled on his heel and swept with me through the crowd and up to the hotel. I had to run up the stairs in his wake if I didn't want my hand wrenched off at the wrist.

He opened the room door, yanked me inside, slammed it shut.

"I did not know he was…" I started to gabble, cowed by his air of uncontained ferocity.

"Do. Not. Speak."

He pulled me into him, placing his hands on my waist and for a wild moment I thought he meant to dance with me, but he lifted me, bracing one forearm beneath my bottom, making my skirts ride up and my legs wrap around his hips. He carried me the few paces to the wall and pressed me against it, his forehead on mine, his hand delving beneath my petticoats before I had even had time to understand what transpired.

"What is…?"

But he silenced my mouth with his, using his lips, his tongue as weapons of offence that I could not fight but only yield to. The fear that made me shake was turning now to something else, an alchemical transformation that took place in my pounding heart, my surging blood and, most of all, my moistening nether parts.

Those parts stood in peril now, as Jasper's hand found the leg of my drawers and moved swiftly to where he knew the slit was situated. I crossed my ankles together behind his back, clinging as closely as I could, hanging on to his neck. I encouraged his violent kissing now, glorying in the bruising passion of it. When his fingers breached the slit and fell with plundering greed between my lower lips, I moaned into his throat.

He repaid my vocalisation with a grunt of his own, spearing my well-used passage with two, then three fingers, before withdrawing them entirely, rather to my dismay.

It appeared that he had been only assessing my readiness for what he had in mind, for his freed hand went immediately to his waistband, unsnapping his braces so that his trousers and underthings fell to the floor.

He dug his fingers into my hips and drove into me, a pitiless sheathing, hard and fast, quite unlike the considerate lover I had known hitherto. My head banged against the wall, but I cared little for anything but this rapt surrender, this utter collapse of my will in the face of his conquest.

I think I understood what he was telling me now. Every forceful seating of his manhood within me while I writhed with my back against the wall contained a message of rebuke for my earlier wilfulness. I was to understand, by his fierce grip and his blistering rhythm, that I had brought this upon myself and that I should expect similar establishment of our roles if I repeated today's misdemeanours.

The kiss, if a kiss it could be called, in all its red-blooded rage, ended only in order for Jasper to bury his mouth in my neck, nipping and sucking at my soft skin. My breath came now in loud pants, for each forward jolt crushed it from my lungs. I held on so tightly but my strength was sapping, my limbs trembling too much, my head light as air. Once more his hand sought the split in my drawers, found it, took a hold of me, his palm flat against my pearl and let it glide, in such a contrast to the rough possession of his manhood, gently over and over until I spilt my hard-won release on to him.

He raised his head and kissed my face at that and said, "Remember this," before holding me very still and very close, almost flattened between him and the wall while I took the last of him, accepting his guttural sounds of completion into my ear.

He stepped back and caught me as I fell, unable to hold on any more, into his arms. My head was spinning as he laid me on the bed and my back ached and so did my legs and arms, but I felt a peace, deep within me, and I shut my eyes and let it overtake me.

His full weight collapsed beside me, sloping the mattress. I rolled towards him. He pulled some hairs that had stuck to my skin from my cheek, all gentleness again.

"Rosebud," he whispered. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," I said, though a certain rawness below told differently. I opened my eyelids slowly. He looked troubled.

"I'm glad of it. Sometimes I am less…controlled…than I would wish. I hope I did not frighten you."

"You did, a little," I admitted. "But not for long. And not as much as when you hit Eddy."

He covered his face with a forearm.

"Sometimes there is such darkness in me, Rosebud," he said. "I had hoped that having you…" I saw his adams apple bob and instinctively put out a hand, feeling the wild pumping of his heart.

"Tell me, John," I said. "Tell me what brings the darkness into you."

"Ah, you will leave me."

"I will not. Let me help you."

He huffed and removed the forearm from his eyes, turning his head to look at me severely.

"What might have helped today, Rosebud, is your staying at the hotel while I was out, as I asked you to."

"I know," I said, subdued. "I did not expect to bump into Eddy!"

"Bumping into Eddy is only one of the misfortunes that might have befallen you, wandering alone in a city you are barely familiar with."

I was unused to making apology, having been used to having my every whim indulged at the Nuns' House, but moved closer to him and whispered, "I know. I'm sorry."

"And I am too," he said, entwining with me.

"Not too sorry, I hope," I said. "Not for the…what you just did with me."

"Oh? I should do it again?"

"As long as you don't knock a man out first, I should not object."

**A/N: Ugh, I rewrote this chapter about eighteen times and still couldn't get it quite the way I wanted. Sorry. I didn't want Jasper suddenly becoming this paragon of gentlemanly virtue – he is still a man with quite a lot of issues, shall we say. But I want it clear that he isn't some irredeemable abusive bastard either. It's quite a fine line to tread, not sure I'm pulling it off here. Anyway – onwards!**


	12. Chapter 12

**Back from my holidays – back to the arms of my Jasper. Ah, happy times.**

In the hansom cab on the way to Southwark, I looked out at the jostle of London and thought more of Jasper's darkness.

It was little in evidence now, with our hands linked and our shoulders in amiable proximity, huddling together against the cold, but the way he had spoken of it had shaken me. What could be its causes and precipitating factors? Could anything check its growth or was it destined to remain in him, a canker suffocating his hopes – and therefore mine – of happiness?

It was this shadow, lurking behind every smile, every gentler expression, that had set me against him from the start. I had sensed it straightaway and experienced the chill of it in my bones – small wonder my fingers protested when they played for him.

I cast my mind back to my earliest childhood and made an effort to remember when he might have been mentioned and in what connection. My parents and the Droods were, after all, the greatest of friends and I had misty recollections of weekend parties in the summer spent playing on the lawns of our house or theirs, Edwin chasing me about with a butterfly net until I nearly fell into the lake – such a sad foreshadow of my dear mother's eventual fate.

But Jasper was never there. I never saw him at the Droods, and they never brought him to our house, although Eddy had vaguely mentioned that he once lived with them for a spell before going to the choir school. Had they left him there over the summer holidays? Surely they must have done, or we would have met when I was a small girl, and I am sure we never did. I would remember – I imagine he would have frightened me, even before the shadow was fully formed.

Mrs Drood, who died when I was perhaps ten or eleven, was his sister – his senior by more than a dozen years. She had been my mother's great friend, but I recalled her as a rather distant figure, aloof and elegant and somewhat icy where my mother was all vivacity. I feared to speak to her and, although she doted on Eddy, one was left with the impression that she was not fond of children. Perhaps, then, the difference in their ages was simply too great for much affection to flourish between them. Yet they were both orphans, alone in the world, with nobody to depend upon but each other until Captain Drood happened along. Edwin had told me often enough that his mother had no people. He thought it rather a joke, and then at other times it irked him to have this fancied blot on his pedigree. Once he said they had been minor landowners down towards Canterbury, and then another time he said they were London people of the artisanal class. I never did draw him out about it though because, I am rather ashamed to say, I wasn't much interested.

And yet now I was, most passionately interested in the provenance and ancestry of Edwin Drood – or rather, his uncle.

Surely somebody must have made mention of him? I frowned in the effort of remembrance, but all that came back to me were hazy impressions, like the buzzing of so many bees on a languid summer day. Captain Drood, when he came back from Ceylon (or perhaps Egypt), sitting at our card table, saying something about 'the boy', and 'the boy' not being Eddy, and Mrs Drood looking perfectly tight-lipped and furious, and the subject being abruptly changed. Was that a true memory? Or did I fix it to fit my own wild curiosity and 'the boy' was some other boy entirely?

I turned my face to him and asked abruptly, "What is the first thing you remember?"

"Of what?" He didn't take my meaning and simply knitted his brow at me.

"Of your life. Your childhood."

He looked at me as if he thought me mad. "Why do you ask?"

"Why not? It is a perfectly ordinary question for a wife to ask of her husband – for any close friend to ask of another. Why should I not ask it of you?"

"Of course you may ask," he said. "But the answer will disappoint you. I remember very little indeed."

"You lived with Eddy, did you not?"

"No, I did not. Only for a month or two, after he was born."

"Oh. I thought it longer."

"For a while, before his birth. A matter of a few years. I don't know. I was very young." He chewed his lip, looking ahead as if seeing something in the distance. "I'm not inclined to talk about that young man, if you don't mind."

"You aren't inclined to talk about anything."

"Rosa, what is this petulance now?"

"I only wish to know you better."

He looked uncomfortable at that, as troubled as he had done earlier on the hotel bed.

"You may know me by my present and my future, Rosebud. Concern yourself only with how the love I bear you will shape and form our lives. What is past is gone. You had no hand in it. But the future – that is where you will know me best."

These were fine enough words, but I was not mollified.

"In other words, 'Shut up, Rosebud'," I grumped.

I was the immediate recipient of a stunningly severe look. I am rather afraid I quailed beneath it.

"Henceforth my only thought," he said in a low and serious voice, "is to be always worthy of your love. To dwell on what is past makes no progress towards that end, therefore I reject its contemplation."

"Dear Lord, Jasper, you make it all sound so mysterious." My flippant tone had an edge of sulk that only the most blockheaded would not have detected. "I simply asked for some reminiscence of whipping a top or chasing a cat. But you were born with whiskers and a long face, it seems."

"And you, madam, are much too pert for your own good. I know I didn't want to discuss Ned, but he was right in that respect, at least."

"O! He said that of me?"

Jasper half-smiled, the shadow lifting from him for a moment of seductive wickedness.

"He said it. I remonstrated at the time, but I wonder at myself now." His arm crept about my waist, his fingers digging into my side in a way that was both ticklish and mildly uncomfortable. I squirmed and tried not to squeal. "Do you feel so free to cheek me now, hmm?" His fingertips drummed dangerously on my ribcage, ready at a second's notice to subject me to an attack of the ticklish kind.

"Oh, get off me, you beast," I protested, trying as I might to extricate myself from him, but in vain. "It is unfair!"

His hand slipped inside my cloak and now he held me fast, so tightly that I was immobile. Bending his lips to my ear, he whispered, "Go on, confess your fault. Apologise for your wicked little tongue, or I shall…"

"Pax! Pax!" I yelped, rather thankful for the thunder of the cab wheels and horse's hooves and thousand other noisy distractions offered by the London streets.

He was having none of it, though, and his devilish fingers worked their way into the grooves between my ribs and then reached up for my armpit, which I knew for sure I would not be able to bear and, gulping down unwilling laughter, I gasped out an apology. But this was merely one defeat. I was not prepared to let the subject of John Jasper's beginnings in life go unmentioned forever.

The cab pulled up at the junction of a narrow street in the Borough. Taking care to disengage myself from Jasper after he had helped me down, I stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear, "My fingers were crossed."

By the time he had made a lunge for me, hampered by our luggage, I had flitted across the cobbles away from him, darting a challenging grin over my shoulder.

Hanging on to the bags for only as long as it took him to catch up with me – confessedly, this was not long at all – he then dropped them and manhandled me into a narrow alley between the street and a small courtyard.

He had me there, pinioned against the cold brick, his mouth busy showing mine what it should be doing rather than passing impudent remarks, when I caught sight of a figure from the corner of my eye and tried to end the kiss. The shape had already melted back into the street by the time I had bitten Jasper's lower lip so hard he staggered, protesting loudly, if indistinctly, and pressing fingers to his mouth.

"Somebody was there," I hissed. "Watching us."

He looked around.

"They've gone now," I explained, somewhat redundantly.

"I shall choose to believe you," he said, raising an eyebrow, having removed his fingers from his lip and found no blood on them. "And will exact, therefore, no immediate retribution."

I pouted at him. "I would never deliberately hurt you."

"So speaks the girl who put a fork in my leg."

"You deserved that, for your boldness."

He loomed over me, one hand braced against the wall at the side of my head, half-smiling with a slightly ghoulish air, as if he were amused by my well-disguised tendency to violence.

"Little Rosa Bud," he said caressingly. "Butter wouldn't melt. But I know her better than that, don't I?" He stroked my cheek and, heaven help me, I would have lifted my skirts then and there and let this wall be my support for a second time that day.

But I knew someone loitered in the yard beyond, so I turned my face and said, "We must find your friend."

He shut his eyes, trying to hide his disappointment, I perceived, and took me by the wrist.

"You're right," he said, and when we walked into the courtyard we found a young woman with a very swollen belly, making much of turning some clothes through a mangle. From the way she blushed when she looked up at us, I knew it had been she who saw us kissing.

"Charles told me to expect you," she said, stepping away from the mangle. "You must be Rosa."

She made to kiss me, and grimaced drolly at the way her bump in front obstructed her.

"Are you Tilly?" I asked, offering my cheek.

"That's right. It's too bad of your husband not to introduce us, though. Where's your tongue, John?"

Jasper and I looked at each other, uncomfortably stricken by the thought of what she had seen that very tongue doing only moments earlier.

"Ah, indeed, very remiss of me," he muttered, putting a hand in the small of my back in a proprietorial manner. "This is my wife, Rosa. Rosa, this is Mrs Matilda Richardson."

"Tilly, like I said." She smiled, her initial embarrassment fading. "We are so pleased to see John married. Charles quite despaired of him. Do come inside. It is so cold, I am certain this laundry will never dry out here."

She picked up her washing basket and carried it under her arm to an open back-door, one of several that looked out into the common yard.

The door led into a small scullery and then, up a step, to a larger kitchen, cluttered but warm. At the counter, a girl chopped carrots. Tilly led us past her without comment and into a passage, off which another door led into a small and rather stuffy front parlour.

"It's not much," she said apologetically, "but it's the best room. I'm sorry it isn't quite warmed up yet – Charles only told me you were coming half an hour ago. I've been at the market, you see."

"Oh, we are quite warm already," I said, and then I burst into flaming blushes again. Everything I said or thought seemed to refer back to that indiscreet embrace. "Please do not trouble yourself."

"Good. Then do take a seat and I shall fetch Charles. I hope you aren't famished – lunch will be a few minutes more, if Ellen can manage it."

Ellen was the girl in the kitchen, I surmised.

When Tilly left, I looked about the room, at the large, heavy furniture which seemed to fill it so that one hardly wanted to breathe the scarce air it left. In pride of place stood the pianoforte, a slightly battered model but a good one. It was by far the most expensive thing in the room – in the whole house, most likely. The blind was drawn at the window, despite the absence of sunlight, allowing only two inches of glass to be seen. It looked out on to a dark street, the facing houses only a few feet away.

"Charles is a cathedral organist, you say." I looked up at the ceiling, which was cracked in several places.

"Yes."

"Does this house belong to the cathedral?"

"No, it is rented."

"Your house belongs to the cathedral."

"If you'd call it a house…Rosa, what are you really asking?"

"I am merely making conversation."

But I wasn't. I was trying to assess what kind of life we would have if he left Cloisterham and must pay our own way in the world. This house was dreary, but at least Tilly could afford a girl to help out. Surely choirmasters must earn more than organists, mustn't they? Especially in a cathedral, where they were responsible for all the music.

Jasper gave me a searching look and seemed about to say something I might not want to hear, but I was saved by the entrance of the Richardsons.

Jasper leapt to his feet, suffering himself to be clapped on the back by his friend, who was a short, mild-looking young man in wire-framed spectacles.

"And your fragrant wife!" he announced, beaming at me and extending his hand to shake. Without rising from my chair I took it and allowed him to shake it, inclining my head gracefully as I had been taught. Tilly took the third chair while Charles had to make do with standing with his back to the fire.

"Well," said Charles, still grinning at me. "Here's news I never expected to hear, though I'm much the better for it, I'm sure."

"Charles had condemned me to permanent bachelorhood," said Jasper.

"Oh, but why?" I asked, though I had done exactly the same thing myself not a sixmonth since.

"Please don't ascribe any intention of giving offence to me, Mrs Jasper―"

"You must call me Rosa," I cried, unable to suppress a little laugh at being addressed in this manner.

"Rosa," he conceded. "And I, of course, am Charles. But Jasper was always such a…well, how can I put it kindly? Such a _profound_ type of fellow, you know?"

"Whatever do you mean by that?" But I could not help giggling – Charles' manner was so open and easy he seemed to invite confidence.

"Deep," said Charles, in a resonant boom. "Deep as the sea, and dark as the night sky." He broke off, laughing. "No, I mean no unkindness. Jasper is and was always a capital fellow and I couldn't esteem him more highly. He is a lucky man and, by the same token, you are a lucky young lady to have won his heart. And now we know that he is a human creature, of flesh and blood, like the rest of us, which clears up one of life's great mysteries."

I wasn't quite sure Jasper was a man to take such joshing in good part, but he gave no appearance of being anything other than tranquil, so I felt justified in joining Charles and Tilly in their chuckles.

Over lunch, there was much discussion of the impending addition to the Richardson family, and then Charles and Jasper talked endlessly of new developments in music, a conversation which was by no means dull, but I was scarcely qualified to contribute.

Instead, I noticed things. I noticed how threadbare was their cloth and how thin the soup. They had a grate but no fire blazing in the tiny dining room, presumably for reasons of economy. Again, I felt an upsurge of panic when I considered our prospects. If Jasper should lose his post, then what? And even if he didn't, how could we both live in that doll-sized place above the arch in Cloisterham?

After lunch, Charles and Jasper left for the cathedral, where they meant to find and look in the ecclesiastical papers for vacancies. There was also some talk of putting in a good word for Jasper with the Dean of Southwark. I had no desire to live in this place, though, and I rather hoped no posts would be vacant in the whole of London.

"You keep a maid," I said, once Tilly and I were alone.

I suppose she found this an odd topic for our first conversation in private, but she nodded.

"Yes. Poor Ellen is a workhouse girl. Such a doleful creature she was when she came here, but she is happier now. We give her as much freedom as we are able and…" Here Tilly lowered her voice. "Workhouse girls are not expensive."

"How much do you pay her?"

"Three pounds and six shillings a year."

"Then perhaps we could afford a girl like her," I thought aloud. I leant closer to her and whispered. "Please tell me – how does one run a household? I have not the smallest idea."

"Oh, Rosa," said Tilly with a sad smile. "How like you I was. I was brought up for a life of gentility. I imagine you were too?"

"I was brought up in a school for young ladies of good breeding. They did not teach mangling or dusting or anything of that kind. Nor yet how to make accounts balance. I am very afraid I shall make a terrible mess of everything and then Jasper and I shall be turned out of doors and he will be so disappointed in me, because, you see, he would still have a comfortable living if he had not run away with me and…"

To my horror, my chest heaved and I felt myself on the verge of a sob.

"Oh my dear!" Tilly threw her arms around me and gave me the best embrace she could, given her impediment. "You mustn't fret, truly, you mustn't. I thought I should never be able to manage, but I do, and quite well, I think. And I know the house isn't much, but it is more than many have, and we are young, with our health and strength and wits. And more than all those, which is love. You love him, don't you, and he loves you?"

I nodded, smiling through the silly tears which had fallen on my cheeks.

"That much is extremely clear," she said, almost winking at me. I thought again of our kiss in the alleyway, and this time the memory warmed rather than shamed me.

"It's the uncertainty that overwhelms me," I confessed. "Ever since I was seven years old, I have known nothing but certainty. The rules and regulations and rituals of school, without interruption, for ten years, at the end of which I knew exactly where I was going and with whom. And now all is changed and…I am lost. And yet, although I am lost, I am also found, because I have found him and he has found me. It is so confusing."

"You poor thing. Charles told me the circumstances of your meeting – unusual indeed, and you must expect some difficulties at first, I think. But you must stand together and face them and all will be well. Trust my judgement on this."

"You sound as if you speak from experience," I sniffed, dabbing at my nose with a handkerchief.

"My parents considered I married beneath me and they disowned me."

"Oh, that is so hard." I thought of my ghost-father. Would he have disowned me? Would he haunt me, as Kitty Mason had suggested?

"But I wrote them about the baby and they have had a change of heart. All's well that ends well."

"I do hope so."

Jasper and Charles returned from their excursion in good spirits and I felt a leap of optimistic faith as we sat down to dinner. Tilly had spent the larger part of the afternoon showing me how to balance household account books and perform mysterious tasks such as shining silver and pressing clothes. Things didn't look quite so impossible any more and I was quite lighthearted.

Jasper said he had heard of several possible openings for him and he meant to write letters of application the very next day and send them off.

"So you see John Jasper in fine fettle," announced Charles, helping himself to boiled potatoes. "A sight for sore eyes it is."

"You think this unusual?" I accepted the dish from him.

"Oh, you should have known him at school, Rosa."

"I am grateful that she did _not_," interposed Jasper, "And Rosa cannot possibly be interested in my schooldays."

"Yes I can. What was he like?"

"Like the cathedral ghost, gliding around in his choristers' robes, with a scowl that would sour the milk."

"Charles," reproached Tilly, but he was in full flow, possibly having drunk a little too much wine already.

"We were all quite afraid of him and we hoped he would be thrown out, but he did have the most beautiful voice, so that was never a real possibility. Absolutely extraordinary effect – when he sang, he was like a different boy, dropped from heaven, instead of the little refugee from hell we saw in the schoolroom."

"Charles!" Tilly was sharper this time. "Sorry, John. He gets overexcited in company."

"Well, he was! My God, such an angry child, so remote and hard to fathom."

"Then how did you become friends?" I felt such a tenderness towards Jasper at that moment that I wanted to take his hand. But it would be unseemly at the dinner table.

"I was in quarantine for scarlet fever over one summer holiday and couldn't leave the dashed school. Jasper was the only person to talk to. And, slowly and steadily, I came to realise that he was actually rather worth talking to. He even talked back to me. On occasion."

And now Jasper smiled and shook his head.

"Only when strictly necessary," he said.

"No doubt. I was an awful ass, after all. And Jasper was fearfully clever."

"Not so," he said, waving his fork.

"We all still remember your feats of calculus, Jasper. You could have gone to Cambridge."

"As a sizar," he said bitterly. "Which is not to my taste."

"And it would have made little difference in the end, perhaps," said Charles. "For many a Cambridge man can only dream of being a cathedral precentor."

"Who knows how long I shall be one?" Jasper was all gloom again, staring into his wine glass.

"Now, now, Jasper. We foresee bright skies ahead, remember."

Charles' bluff jollity seemed to have its effect on Jasper, who turned the conversation away from his schooldays – rather to my chagrin, for I found this line of discussion quite fascinating – and towards the subject of recent concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms.

After dinner, the Richardsons made Jasper sing while Charles played. He sang some of Schubert's _Winterreisen_ and how he seemed to inhabit them, as if he had truly lived the story. It was one of the most compelling performances I had ever seen and Tilly sat throughout with her hand on her bump as if she felt it respond to the music. Perhaps she did.

To my undying relief, nobody called upon me to sing or play, though both the Richardsons turned their hands to the instrument.

While Jasper played and Tilly sang, Charles took the opportunity to lean over to me and mutter, "Jiggered if you haven't saved the old fellow from eternal moroseness. He is actually _happy_. How on earth have you done it?"

I could scarcely answer this but simply coloured and simpered a little and looked down at my hands.

"Well, whatever it is, keep doing it."

I took this advice to heart once the candle had lit us to our bed in the upstairs back chamber. After placing it carefully on the nightstand and saying goodnight to Tilly, who showed us in, Jasper came to stand behind me, his hands clasped on my stomach, his chin on my shoulder, his lips at my ear.

"I have wanted my hands on you since before lunch," he murmured. "I have never seen Richardson struck as dumb as he was when he saw you. I think he'd been expecting Lady Macbeth, or some other consort more befitting his image of me."

I twisted my neck to look up at him, finding his lips for a kiss.

"I was so apprehensive of meeting them, but they are quite lovely. Tilly has been such a comfort to me today."

"You needed comfort?" His hands tightened around my waist.

"I had some silly fears about practical matters. Just foolishness really. Do not look so grave. None of them concern you. I am so very, very proud and happy to call myself your wife."

For a moment he looked as if he thought I trifled with him. Then his arms almost crushed me in the force of his embrace and he covered my face and neck in a profusion of kisses.

"You cannot feel one quarter of the pride I do, my love," he said. "And you cannot imagine how it touches me to hear you say so. Now, I have been picturing the removal of this dress all the way through the soup and meat courses. By pudding it had disappeared and I had turned my attention to your undergarments. I think you and I are for bed, my lady."

"The walls are so thin," I whispered, glancing nervously at the one that partitioned us from the Richardsons. I could hear their low voices beyond.

"Then we shall be quiet," said Jasper implacably, pulling at a stay-lace.

He had me undressed in scant minutes – so much more quickly than I could disrobe myself – and put the garments over a chair before gathering me in his arms and dropping me gently upon the bed.

It made the most deafening creak! I put my hands to my mouth and widened my eyes at him. He had also covered his mouth, stifling dismayed laughter.

"Very quiet," he amended, putting his hand on my breastbone and pushing me flat on my back.

"We can't!" I whispered while he undressed.

He simply nodded, smiling at me and flashing his eyes.

"It will be far too noisy."

"Not necessarily."

I was at a loss to understand how we could possibly do anything without rousing the entire street, but Jasper continued to unclothe himself, never taking his gaze from me. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but he stood apart, deliberately, until he was completely naked.

Slowly and with great self-control, he climbed on to the bed and straddled me, his knees abutting my thighs. The candlelight flickered on his face and chest as he leant down to kiss me, teasing me, licking my lips, grazing them with his teeth, slipping his tongue inside with inexorable ease. I wanted to squirm, but every move I made set off a symphony of rusty squeals from the bedsprings.

"Perfectly still," he whispered, breaking off. He brought down his elbows to rest on the mattress so that he hovered only an inch or so above me. His manhood lay alongside my thigh, pushing blindly at the crease of it. I felt a dab of moisture there, the forerunner of that which he would later deposit within me.

The springs protested, but mildly.

"It's not possible," I whimpered, aware of his fingers between my nether lips and his tongue on my nipple. How could I keep still? How could I keep quiet when he brought me to this pitch of pleasure?

"We shall test the proposition," he said. His fingers glided further within me, his hand moving hardly at all, yet providing such melting delights. I longed to buck my hips, to grind against him, but I did not dare. All I could do was rely on his exactitude of touch. Fortunately, it was most reliable.

I could do no more than breathe heavily in response to the burgeoning of heat and intensity at my core.

"Sweet witch," he rasped into my ear, "tell me you wish to be taken."

"Oh…yes…" I gasped, no longer mindful of the vagaries of the bedsprings. "I do…please take me…"

From some rational spot within the maelstrom of sensations, I wondered how he could do this soundlessly, but my body gave him my full confidence, my thighs parting to admit him without demur.

How slowly, how maddeningly slowly, he eased himself inside me. The effort of exerting so much self-control told in the beads of sweat that gathered on his forehead and in the preternatural focus of his gaze. I lay with my hands loosely on his hips, guiding him in what little way I could, powerless to do much except yield and stretch.

At the last inch or so he became impulsive and the springs groaned in reply to his final drive forward. They covered my little cry of satisfaction, though, so perhaps it was as well.

And then all was a languid, delicious upward spiral through the shallows and onwards into the deepest reaches of pure pleasure. How different it was, taken so very slowly, compared to that frantic coupling of the morning. Indeed, my quim must have been quite grateful for the altered pace, for it could not have withstood a similar ravishment. But this suited it perfectly, much as I could have wished to be allowed to expend my frustrated energies in moving and driving him on.

He pushed my thighs close together so that each tiny move felt so much the larger. There came a point when the springs tiny little mewls grew more frequent and attained a kind of rhythm, but by then, I was beyond caring. Perhaps the Richardsons were asleep anyway.

The tremors began to flow through me, and I showed him by my panicked breathing and the fluttering of my fingers against his flank that I was very close to my end. The position we were in seemed to enlarge his manhood and make it rub against some point of enormous stimulation as if he struck a match each time he crossed it.

In the instant before the flood, I felt I might leap bodily into the air, but he held me down with his weight on me and put his hand across my mouth. Unable to cry out or writhe, I bit his finger and flexed my ankles, battering my heels into his shins.

The spilling of his seed, some few minutes later, involved his burying his head in my breasts and muffling a moan into my nipple. The springs creaked. We had not been able to achieve that silence to which we had aspired.

But I do not think we cared so much about that.

My head was on his chest and the delicious blurring of sleep lapped at the corners of my consciousness when he spoke.

"I was not truthful with you earlier."

I lifted my eyes, blinking some of the fatigue from them. The candle was very low now, its light only sufficient to outline the contours of his face.

"When, love?"

"When I said I remembered nothing of my childhood."

"Oh." My heart contracted, a kind of tender fear filling it, fear for him, fear of what he might have to say. I held my palm to his cheek. "You do not have to tell me. What you said about knowing you best in the present and the future…"

"No. I understand why you want to know. My earliest memory is of being in a carriage, with Captain Drood, on the way to his house."

"How old were you?"

"Four, perhaps three. I felt as if my heart was broken. I can't explain it any better than that. My heart was broken and my head hurt, because he had boxed my ears when I wouldn't stop crying. That's my earliest memory, Rosa. That and some indistinct impressions of comfort, softness, gentleness that came before it. But I never can recall her face."

"Whose face?"

"I suppose some foster mother or wet nurse. I really don't know. My questions on the matter were never answered."

"So you ―" I struggled to sit up a little, but he put a finger to my lips and made me lie back down.

"Hush, you need to sleep. I simply thought your question deserved an answer. I have no particular wish to dwell on the memory, especially tonight when happiness has been mine."

"It shall be yours always," I vowed, kissing his brow.

"I hope so, my love," he said, and he blew out the candle.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

I was awoken by cathedral bells ringing out for the early morning service.

Lying spooned in Jasper's arms, sleepily warm and blissfully enveloped, I wriggled my bottom against him, seeking even closer contact. I think he still slept though, for he made some senseless noises and twitched a little, but made no more response than that.

The bells rang on and then he stiffened and propped himself up. When I looked back at him, he was rubbing his eyes in a panic.

"I'm late," he said.

"Late? For what?"

He blinked a few times, his face stretching in all kinds of confused contortions, until finally he seemed to recognise me and looked about the room.

"Oh." He lay back down, exhaling in great relief. "No. I am not late."

"You thought you were in Cloisterham."

"Oh, for a life unregulated by church bells, by the endless tyranny of the three daily services."

"You have never loved your work?"

"At first I did. No, that is unfair. I do enjoy it, for the most part. I like teaching, I like conducting, I like singing. What I do not like is the prospect of every day the same with minor variations until I sink into my grave."

"But now you are married, you have other things to look forward to at the end of your working day," I pointed out.

He turned his head to smile at me, then caught me in a kiss. We moved closer, into each other's arms, careless of the groaning bedsprings.

"This much is true," he said. "But must they always be at the _end_ of my working day?"

His hand crept over my breast, his thumb circling my ever-hardening nipple while he breathed heavily into my ear.

"We can't," I whispered weakly. "They'll hear us."

"Surely Charles must be at the church. And Tilly will be downstairs, seeing to breakfast."

"You don't know that."

"Oh, I do." He released my breast and moved his hand down my back, over my bottom, parting the cheeks a little with the sideways drift of his fingers. "I know it for certain. Nobody will hear us. Nobody at all."

His beguiling words rustled in my ear, sending little quivers of sensation through me, especially when he kissed the soft skin underneath and around my neck.

"Oh, you are very bad," I tried to protest, though I had little faith in the strength of my purpose. "You mustn't…"

He pulled my leg over his hip, rendering accessible those lower lips his fingers sought to ply. It seemed impossible that we had been married only three days, given the extraordinary amount of times we had consummated and re-consummated the match. From doing nothing of the sort ever to doing it almost all the time was quite a leap. But I supposed it was the same for all newly married couples. And I truly couldn't imagine ever wanting to do anything else more. I wondered that more people didn't take permanently to their beds and lose their livelihoods in the madness of passion.

"Mustn't I?" One hand at the back of my neck, keeping me close, the other at my bud, dipping deep into my flowing juices. "Should I stop?"

For form's sake, I gave his chest a weak little push, then I gave in and began to flex the leg that lay over him, working with him in the deliberate preparation of my sex.

"You are bad," I repeated, but my voice was low and breathy.

He kissed the words from my mouth.

"I'll show you how bad," he said. He watched me through hooded eyes, his expression so deadly intent I felt quite faint. I was coming close and glorying in the knowledge that there would be much more to follow, when we were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.

"Madam says breakfast is served, please you."

Jasper groaned like an injured man, burying his face in my breasts.

"No, no, no, no,no," he whispered.

I giggled, holding on to the back of his neck, my fingers fixed in the damp curls there.

"We must get up."

He threw himself on his back, his arms spread wide like the crucified Christ, for a moment of anguish, then he sat up, face in hands.

"Yes, yes," he muttered.

"Poor darling," I crooned, kneeling up behind him and rubbing his shoulders. "I am also a little disappointed, you know."

He put a hand over one of mine.

"I know."

But as it transpired, our disappointment was quickly turned to hopeful anticipation. Over breakfast, Tilly informed us, in a needlessly apologetic tone, that Charles would be busy in the cathedral all morning and she had longstanding arrangements to visit an aunt for Sunday lunch. If it wasn't too dreadful of her, would we mind awfully being left to fend for ourselves until Charles returned home at midday?

"Oh, not at all," Jasper and I chorused.

She lifted the teapot to pour us all a second cup.

"Are you quite sure? I do feel as if I ought to stay…"

"No, no, pray, not on our account," I said.

"Perhaps you should like to attend the Cathedral Eucharist."

"Well, perhaps we shall," said Jasper smoothly, though I imagined attending Cathedral Eucharist was exceptionally low on his agenda for the morning.

"I suppose the Southwark congregation will strike you as rather less genteel than that in Cloisterham."

"I suppose there will be substantially fewer octagenarians."

Tilly laughed.

"Charles is always saying how dull Cloisterham was. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean any offence."

"I have taken none," said Jasper. "Though it is fair to say that mine and Rosa's marriage will probably be the chief subject of conversation on Cloisterham High Street until 1875."

"You are much droller than I remember, John," she said. "I am sure marriage agrees with you."

"I am sure it does," he said.

I kept my eyes on my toast, trying to hide my profuse blushes.

"Well," said Tilly, standing up and smoothing down her skirts. "I fear I must be away, or Aunt Ada will fret. Do ask Ellen, won't you, if you need anything. She has the afternoon off, but she'll be here until Charles returns. Are you sure you don't mind?"

"Please, just…" Jasper waved his hand, almost knocking over a boiled egg in its cup.

"You are very good. We will plan something wonderfully interesting for the afternoon, I promise."

"That will be lovely," I said, watching her steer herself, bump and all, through the narrow door to the hallway.

We sat sipping silently at our tea, listening to her bundle herself up in cloaks and muffs and hats, then she shouted something to Ellen about the cutlets, waited for her answer and opened the front door.

As soon as it shut, Jasper put down his cup. He looked at me as if he were a particularly ravenous wolf who had just spotted a juicy young rabbit.

I took a breath of delicious fear and bit my lip.

He pushed back his chair, rose to his feet.

I pushed back my chair, gripped the seat, looking around me for escape routes. Only the door to the hall presented itself.

"Perhaps," he said, in a low, throaty voice, stalking around the dining table, "you should like to attend the Cathedral Eucharist."

I could not help an unladylike little snort of laughter at that, testing the floor with my feet, looking for the best position from which to spring away from him.

"I'm sure that would be lovely," I said, shrinking as he came closer.

"Or perhaps," he continued, but a few paces from me now. He made a pounce forward and I screamed and leapt to my feet, dodging him. "Not."

I hurtled through the narrow corridor, knowing he was right at my heels, wondering if Ellen heard any of this and not especially caring. At the foot of the stairs, he almost caught me, but I climbed two steps, away from him, thundering up with breathless squeals.

Having nowhere else to run, I pelted into the back bedroom and tried to shut the door against him, but it was no use – he was through it in under a second, closing it behind him and standing against it, a shark-like grin aimed straight at me.

"Oh," I said, hugging myself and stepping back. "Oh dear."

"Where will you run to, little Rosa Bud?"

Where indeed? Into the wardrobe? Under the bed?

"It seems I am…trapped," I said.

He nodded. "Does it not? Well, nothing else for it than to give yourself up quietly." He beckoned me with a crooked finger.

I tried so hard to keep the exultant smile off my face, fearing it would spoil the game, but I was simply too strung up with pleasurable excitement. I skirted the bed, slowly, still looking for some way of getting past him.

"I think you should come over here and claim me," I said, thinking that if I could only get him away from the door…

"Oh, should I? But then there may be a penalty for your failure to surrender gracefully. Are you prepared to accept it?"

"What penalty?"

"I haven't decided yet. It could be…anything." God, his smile was truly demonic.

I could have gone to him, I could have saved myself, but instead I sidestepped over to a chest of drawers from which I could, just faintly possibly, duck underneath him and away, provided he was moving slowly enough and at the opportune angle.

"Here I am," I said innocently. I held out my wrists.

He straightened himself and took one step towards me. I could see he was expecting some kind of lunge forward or feint. I could also see that I stood no chance of getting past him. The room was too small and the scope of his reach too wide.

All the same, I had to try, so I took a deep breath and threw myself with all my might to his left side, hoping that speed and surprise might save me yet.

They didn't, of course. My flight was most prematurely ended by means of a hand wrapped tight around my upper arm and then a summary lifting of my kicking, flailing body over his shoulder.

Once I was dropped on the bed, he rolled me on to my stomach and climbed over my still struggling form, straddling me at the waist with one hand between my shoulders, keeping me down.

"You can stop fighting me now," he said. "I think we've established that I win and you lose. Haven't we?" The hand at my neck drummed its fingers, awaiting my reply.

"It is unfair," I said. "You have the natural advantage."

"Should I cut myself off at the knees?"

I giggled into the counterpane. "No, please don't."

He reached behind me and lifted my ankle, unlacing and pulling off my boots, which were then thrown without ceremony to the corner of the room. I raised my head a little, freed from his tyrannical hand, and tried to look behind me. I could only see parts of him, an arm in shirtsleeves, a face darkly intent, a hand grappling with his waistcoat buttons.

I wondered raptly what he meant to do with me. Of course, I had some idea. But his knowledge of these arts seemed to extend much further than the reach of my imagination – so many mysteries were still unsolved, and he had the key to them. What might I learn today? My thighs trembled with dread, delightful anticipation.

The waistcoat was thrown the way of the boots, and then I felt the loosening of my gown, fingers delving between the laces, touching my skin above my corset, warming it instantly. He moved it down over my arms until they were bare and the top half of the gown lay rucked around my waist. My corset did not last long after that.

He ran his hands all over my back and shoulders, kissing the nape of my neck, my ears, the tender skin between while I sighed into the bed covers, so very happy to be at his mercy.

"Don't move," he whispered, climbing off me to better remove my gown and petticoats. "Oh, you are behaving yourself now. Do you think I'll forget about the penalty?"

I looked sharply behind to catch a flash of roguish smile.

"Tell me what it is," I pleaded, trying to twist away from him, but he arrested my progress with a hand on my hip and took his place over my thighs, a little lower down than before.

I squeaked and tried to pull myself up the bed when he parted the cloth of my drawers, so that my bottom was bare. He put his hand upon one smooth cheek and rubbed it, softly and gently, but there was an unmistakable menace in the move that made my heart flutter and my nether regions dampen.

"Perhaps you could guess," he said.

"I don't…think so…" Perhaps I could. Did he mean to…?

His hand circled both cheeks, slowly, building up a froth of sensation that made me raise my hips and invite more. All the same, it was terribly mortifying to be treated thus and I was hot with embarrassment.

"Something that might improve your manners," he whispered. "And your concentration."

I gritted my teeth and widened my eyes. He couldn't!

"Are you ready?"

"You don't mean…?"

He raised his hand and let it fall, not heavily, but with a rather echoey crack, on to my bottom. I yelped, more in surprise than pain, and wiggled my hips.

How had that felt? It had felt…really, awfully good. A little suffusion of heat built around the area where his hand had fallen, but it fell away too quickly. I wanted to feel it again.

"What do you think?" He rubbed the little patch of warmth, easing it. "Do you deserve it?"

"I…" I didn't want to say yes, didn't want to admit that this could be the beginnings of a revelation. It was too difficult! But what if he stopped?

"Or have you learned your lesson?"

"I'm…not sure…"

"Oh. Not sure." He sounded pleasantly surprised, a cat with a mouse that wouldn't run away. "I think we should carry on until you are, don't you?"

"I…don't know…"

"Tell me when you do." He pinched at the soft flesh, mildly.

"I do know. Go on then."

He laughed under his breath. "Sweet Rosa Bud. I thank God for you."

And then his hand fell again, and it was even better than before. With each succeeding stroke, slowly dealt but beautifully judged, the tingle spread. I began to arch and moan under his hand, carried into a realm of exquisite submission from which I hoped never to be delivered.

"How does that feel?" he wished to know. He wished for me to describe it. I did not feel equal to the task.

I hoped he would be satisfied with my long, appreciative sigh.

"Oh, you like it, do you?"

I let my hips answer for me this time, raising my bottom a little, in a mute request for more.

At the very moment that he laid the next palmprint, the fingers of his other hand delved between the lower slit. Immediately, I was beyond hope, so overwrought with melting transports that I thought I might weep. How could he know with such perfect accuracy how to drive me to madness?

"You _do _like it. Dear Lord."

He traced the outline of my pearl, never quite giving it the full, firm touch I craved, though I suspected this was a deliberate witholding, as he confirmed when I began to buck underneath him, recognising the first stirrings of release.

"Oh no," he whispered, taking his fingers away. "This is not a reward."

He stopped striking my bottom at the same time, somewhat to my relief, as it had reached a point of discomfort that threatened to take it beyond the realms of pleasure. With its ending, I could luxuriate in the sweet warmth that radiated through my lower regions, for all the world as if they blushed. My flesh felt tender and a little tight, and my bud throbbed as if it would burst.

If he did not take me now, I should certainly expire.

He reached over me for a pillow, sliding it beneath my stomach, raising my poor stinging bottom as if he had further ill intentions for it.

I whimpered in a mild anxiety, unsure of what could be coming. I heard him unbutton and remove his britches, though his shirt remained on. I could feel it flapping against my thighs, then it rubbed my behind as he knelt behind me. His manhood fitted itself between my nether lips while he held me at the waist. He moved his hips, letting the pole slide back and forth, covering it in my dew.

"What is this?" I whispered, still a little alarmed. "What are you doing?"

"You've paid the penalty," he said, still sliding through the channel. "Now it's time to finish what we started before breakfast."

"But how?" I wondered aloud, expecting him to flip me on to my back.

He stroked my sore cheeks, tutting slightly at something, presumably the colour and condition he had left them in.

"You should see your poor little posterior, my love," he said. "It's as rosy as you are now."

"Please," I mewled, needing to feel that thickness, that stretch within, more than ever.

The sincerity of my plea spurred him, but instead of turning me over, he clutched at my hips and pushed the head of his shaft against me from behind.

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"Hmmm?"

"I did not realise…this was possible."

"It is indeed possible. And you may feel it more deeply than ever."

The idea of this seemed fantastical in the extreme – to feel it _more_ deeply? How could it be so? And yet, as he eased himself in, I began to see what he meant. The angle and position lent itself to a degree of impalement I had not yet experienced.

My temptation to squirm joyously was curtailed by his holding me firm, one hand on my shoulder, another on my hip, while he thrust, with a scream of bedsprings, in and in and in. All that had led up to this coupling, every single element of it, unleashed a primitive joy in me, a need to be held down and taken and made to submit.

He did not even need to reach down for my bud, for he had prepared me so well and his unusual connection struck such sparks with each drive forward that I felt the pleasure grow without the need for additional assistance.

My face cushioned by the rumpled bedclothes, I gloried in his power over me, the piquant shamefulness of my position, the still-present glow at my rear, his tight hold, his assurance and skill. Here, less than a week after leaving Cloisterham an ignorant virgin, I had found unimaginable fulfilment.

He did things to me I would have found shocking, even disturbing, had I heard tell of them before, and yet I felt so grateful to him for it, and so sorry for all women who could not experience this unutterable joy.

I gripped the bedclothes in tight fists and pulled at them, delirious with the force of climax, my shrill exhalations mercifully muffled in the counterpane. When he followed me into his own bliss, he collapsed on top of me, flattening me to the bed with a final hideous shriek of springs.

As we lay, retrieving our breath, we heard the neighbouring bedroom door open and various drawers open and closed, as if washing were being put away. Ellen was at her chores, and who could tell how long she might have been upstairs.

Jasper, his sweat-dampened face on my neck, let my skin absorb a low chuckle.

"She heard?" I whispered.

"No matter," he replied. "We are doing nothing wrong or unexpected."

"An innocent girl," I said reproachfully, and how odd the words sounded on my tongue. I could have been talking about myself, only a few days since.

"And are you now the corrupted?" he said, voicing my thought.

"Perhaps it might be thought so."

"But do you think so?"

I considered it.

"No. I don't. This is all so…I cannot explain. It is what we were made for. There is nothing corrupt in it."

He climbed off me, and I thought he should have removed his shirt before engaging, for it was clinging to him and would need to be changed. I liked the way it clung, though, so I did not suggest it. Besides, my drawers and camisole were in a similar condition.

"How could you possibly know…?" I began to wonder, but I did not care to continue the thought. It was still too intimate, too blush-provoking to voice.

"Know what?" He put his hand upon my bottom and stroked it. Oh, he divined what I was thinking! He was the devil. And an angel. Both together. "My poor Rosebud. Shall you sit comfortably at lunch?"

"You beast! But I had no idea…"

"That you could enjoy such treatment? No. But now we know that you do…"

"You presume a great deal!"

He laughed and patted my rump.

"I think not, my love. If only I had known sooner. Our music lessons could have been much enlivened."

"Stop teasing." I kicked my legs and buried my furiously heated face even deeper in the covers. "You know altogether too much."

"And you are glad of it."

I kicked my legs again, but I could not deny it.

All morning we lay abed, kissing and touching and easing once more into that most desired of conjunctions, until the cathedral bells rang again and we knew that Charles would soon return for his lunch.

We passed a perfect day, walking in the Vauxhall Gardens after lunch and then welcoming Tilly back for a cosy afternoon tea before the drawing room fire. In the evening, we all went to the cathedral for evensong, but Jasper was most distracting, and could not simply sit still and listen to the music but must pass comment on everything and remark under his breath how this tempo was too fast and this note too flat until I huffed and moved away from him.

I lay in my bed, late, reviewing the cavalcade of delights, wondering when a day such as this might come again. For the vista now was one of clouds and storms. Tomorrow we must see Grewgious, and the day after that we faced the return to Cloisterham.

I turned to look at Jasper's sleeping visage, eyelashes fluttering on pale cheeks, lips slightly parted to allow sweet exhalations. How innocent he looked like this. I thought of the boy he had been and I feared for him.


	14. Chapter 14

**From full-on smut to full-on drama now. Hold tight!**

I was terribly nervous, crossing Blackfriars Bridge on the way to the Inns of Court and, judging by Jasper's pincer-like grip on my arm, so was he.

The ice had gone, replaced by a blustery west wind that sent periodic showers of rain on to us. Jasper had had to pull his hat low on to his crown to avoid its being blown off his head and into the mud-churned waters of the Thames. In this cold weather, the river did not smell too rank, but I could only imagine the stench of a hot summer.

Once again, I uttered a silent inward prayer that we would never have to live here.

After almost being mown down several times by rampant dray horses and hackney cabs, we arrived at the Inns and found at last the little cobbled courtyard where Mr Grewgious' rooms were located.

I was nauseous with dread and I huddled in closer to Jasper.

"Will it be well?" I asked him in a small voice.

"We cannot force him to approve of our marriage, but he must recognise its legality," said Jasper.

This was not entirely reassuring. I hated to upset Grewgious, who had been so good to me in the past, and thought the sight of his disappointed face would surely bring me to tears.

I girded my loins as best I could – though they were somewhat weary and aching from recent overuse – and entered the passage.

Jasper knocked on the door. It was swiftly answered by a slight, pale young man who broke into a manic grin which I think was intended to look professional.

"Mr Grewgious is in his chambers, do you wish to see him?" he said, over-enunciating madly.

"Yes, please," we both said.

"And who may I say is calling?"

"Mr and Mrs Jasper," said Jasper, pre-empting my reply, which, I fear, would have employed my former name.

The clerk paused and then took a sharp breath.

"Indeed," he said, looking over us more keenly. "I shall inform Mr Grewgious immediately."

He shut the door in our faces and left us eyeing each other nervously.

"What a strange fellow," I whispered. Jasper squeezed my arm.

Seconds later, the door re-opened and the clerk's head peered around it.

"She," he said, pointing to me, "may enter. You, Sir, I fear, have not been granted admittance."

"I beg your pardon?" Jasper was not best pleased and his tone was hostile.

"Mr Grewgious requests that you wait for her outside."

"The devil I will," said Jasper angrily, but I patted him on the arm pleadingly.

"Oh, don't make a scene, I beg you. It will be all right. I can speak to him alone."

"He will see us together," Jasper insisted. "The matter at hand concerns us both."

From behind the door, Grewgious' voice reached us.

"I will see my ward alone."

"She is not your ward, Sir, she is my wife!"

"These are my chambers, and I decide whom I shall admit. Pray you, go and wait outside, Mr Jasper." I had never heard the old gentleman sound so querulous.

"Please," I said again. "It may be better this way. Do not fret. I will state our case plainly and hold my ground, I promise you."

Jasper, reluctant to leave me alone, held on to me for some moments of indecision before kissing me on the forehead and storming out to the courtyard.

I followed the clerk, with trepidation, into Grewgious' chambers.

He stood to receive me. Oh dear, his face filled me with foreboding as he indicated the seat opposite his.

"Bazzard, perhaps some tea?" he requested.

"Oh yes," sighed the pale youth. "That's Bazzard. Tea boy and general skivvy." With this somewhat astonishing proclamation, he waltzed from the room.

I sat down and tried to configure my features into an expression of serious earnestness.

"Dearest girl, whatever possessed you? No, don't answer that. I know exactly what possessed you, and he is pacing up and down the courtyard plotting my demise as we speak, no doubt."

"You do him a disservice. He is not what you think him. And, no matter what your thoughts on the propriety of the match, he is my husband. For good or ill. For better for worse. What is done cannot be undone."

Grewgious sighed.

"There's truth in that," he conceded. "Deuce take him."

"I am happy, Mr Grewgious, very happy with my choice. We are so much in love and he means to be the best of husbands."

"Well, perhaps he does. Many a man embarks on a marriage with good intentions."

"You do not think him capable of sustaining them?"

"Dear girl…oh, perhaps I should not say it."

"Say what?"

He looked so grave and so haunted that I almost felt like taking his hands and consoling him.

Bazzard entered with the tea tray and left with wordless yet eloquent disgust.

"Rosa, you are very like your mother, you know."

"I barely remember her, except as a source of happiness, rather like the sun."

"Yes, yes. That is fitting. She was a source of happiness, to many. Not only do you favour her in your looks, but you share some of her traits of character. She was the loveliest girl in the world, but once her mind was set on something, oh dear me, could one dissuade her for all the tea in China? Never. In other words, a headstrong creature who, like many of her nature, sometimes had cause to regret her impetuosity."

"Surely you don't refer to her marriage? To my father?"

Grewgious planted his fingers on his forehead, his face anguished again.

"I had never intended to tell you this, but…"

"A cautionary tale? Oh, do go on, Mr Grewgious, you are frightening me now."

"Your parents, dear girl, were very much in love. Blindly so. In the passion of their youth, they married in great haste. I had misgivings, but I could scarcely voice them when my own position was…rather partial…"

"Why partial?"

"Foolish hopes and dreams that could never bear fruit. I don't know why I even mention it. Please disregard it."

I was too stunned at the revelation of Grewgious' old love for my mother to pick the thread of the conversation back up, until he did it for me.

"Their love sustained them through the first years of marriage quite well, and your birth only augmented it. But, my dear, your father, although a well-intentioned man who adored both you and your mother, was not without flaw."

My teacup had not yet reached my lips. I sat, filled with a sense of creeping horror, waiting for Grewgious to continue.

"His weakness, my love, was the gaming tables. Though possessed of an inheritance and a fine house, he gambled it all away."

"But he couldn't have!" I exclaimed. "My trust? My inheritance?"

"The day your mother drowned," he said in a low voice, "he had told her that your house was to be repossessed."

"But the proceeds from the sale of the house are what paid for my schooling. It cannot be."

"The repossession was postponed, out of respect for a grieving widower, for the period of a year. At the expiration of that year, your father also died. The house reverted to the bank."

"And…but…"

"He left you nothing, Rosa. Nothing at all."

"But…the Nuns' House fees…my inheritance…"

"I am a foolish old fellow who earns undeserved amounts of money and yet has nothing to spend it all on."

"You mean, you? You paid…you did?" The shock of it all was driving the breath from my body and the sense from my head. The world had tilted, the shelves of books spinning around me.

He put his handkerchief to his eye and looked away, towards the casement window.

"And you would have carried on? After I married Edwin?"

He nodded.

"And my parents' deaths…?" I shivered. The horrifying possibility that neither of them had been accidental or natural hung over me.

"Let's not dwell upon that, my poor child," he said, his voice so choked with the fight against tears that it started my own flowing.

"Oh, my dear. Please don't upset yourself."

I raised my tear-streaked face. "I haven't upset myself! _You_ have upset me. And yet you have been so kind and I have so much to be grateful to you for. I cannot…it is too much to think about…"

"Take some time to calm yourself. Drink your tea. Bazzard can get you some brandy if you…"

"No, no. No. I need only to collect myself. I am shocked, that is all."

"I understand."

"Did the Droods know of this?"

"No. As your mother's lawyer, I was party to her financial affairs, but nobody else knew of it. The shame was too much for her to bear. When, after your father's death, the house was sold at auction, everybody presumed it was in the terms of his will."

"And so I am penniless."

"I am very sorry, Miss―, I mean, Mrs Jasper." He spoke the name Jasper with contempt.

"In going against your orders, I have effectively disinherited myself. Is this what you wish me to understand?" I had made my voice small and hard, determined to be businesslike even as my world and my past crashed about my ears.

"I cannot give over my money to that man. I am very sorry. I simply cannot bring myself to do it. But what I can do is this. I will offer you a place of safety if a time of trouble equal to that your mother faced ever comes to you. You may always rely on my assistance and my shelter. Indeed, if at any time you wish to leave Jasper, you need only come to me and I will restore your inheritance – by which I mean the allowance I would have paid you on your marriage to Mr Drood. I will give you the means to live independently whenever you request it."

"I shall never request it."

"You are very sure of that now. But, just as your mother did not know of your father's weakness for the gaming tables, there may well be foibles of Mr Jasper's of which you are not yet aware. I only wish to warn you to keep your eyes open and not to let love blind you."

My stomach was in turmoil. Jasper's foibles. The opium. What if he went back to it? What if the pain of his past overwhelmed him eventually and even my love was not enough to blot it out?

I followed Grewgious' eyes to the rain-blattered window, picturing Jasper out there, a lonely soul with nothing but me to lighten his life.

"You do not know him as I do," I said. "He is not a gambler, at any rate."

"There are many pitfalls into which a man can fall. Gambling is not the only one. He has always struck me as possessing a most uncertain temper. Rosa, you must promise me this – if he ever lays a finger on you in anger, you come directly to me."

"He never would!" My passionate cry must have been audible in the yard.

"I see my efforts will be in vain today. But bear them in mind. That is all I ask."

At last I was able to lift the cup to my lips and wet them.

"I must ask something of you, Mr Grewgious."

"Whatever it is, I hope I can help you with it."

"You were a personal friend of my mother's, were you not?"

"I was accorded that privilege, yes."

"So you spent time at our house. And you would have met the Droods?"

"I met Captain and Mrs Drood on a number of occasions."

"Did you like them?"

"I barely knew them. I did not bear them any ill will, as I recall."

"Did you ever meet Jasper? When he lived with them, as a small boy?"

"The only small boy I recall is young Mr Drood. I was aware that Mrs Drood had a brother, but it was not something that was forcibly impressed upon me."

"He was always at school."

"I have no idea where he was, Rosa. It was none of my concern."

"When did you become aware of him?"

"When he was designated Mr Drood's guardian…five years ago? I called on him during one of my rare visits to Cloisterham."

"Did you not wonder where he had sprung from?"

"I suppose I was surprised that he had been placed in a position of such responsibility, given his age. But he was already teaching at the cathedral, so there was some basis of rationality for the decision. Following the death of Captain Drood, I gathered the pair had become close."

"They weren't beforehand?"

"I don't know. I am merely recalling events that are somewhat distant and shrouded in the obfuscations of what has since passed. My memory may well deceive me."

"Did you dislike him at your first meeting?"

"I neither liked nor disliked him. He struck me as a rather tense and anxious individual, but he was perfectly civil."

"Why do you dislike him now?"

"Because of the despicable way in which he has behaved. You are not old enough to know better, but he is. Pilfering you from beneath the nose of his own nephew, then carrying you off to Gretna Green against the wishes of your guardian…these are not actions designed to inspire respect and trust, Rosa. I hope one day you will come to understand my reservations, even if – and believe me, I truly hope this may be the case – you never share them. I want you to be happy. I want no shadow to ever cast its length and breadth over your life. If he is the man for you, then I will, in time, come to accept this. But it is too soon for me. I'm an awkward old stick and I need to allow matters to ferment before I can truly judge them."

"Well." I put down my teacup and tried to take stock. "I have learned that my father was a feckless gambler and my mother may have drowned herself. He in his turn may have taken his own life, leaving me a penniless orphan. And through my life, the man I thought of as executor of my parents' wills has proved to be, in actual fact, my benefactor. My inheritance has never existed, and now Jasper and I must rely solely on his earnings."

"Remember, if you need shelter…"

"I shall not need shelter. And now, as there is no further reason for us to see each other, I shall say a final farewell. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I wish you well."

I rose and he moved also to his feet, in a fluster.

"Rosa, do not say such final words. You cannot mean to sever all communication."

"Somehow I shall find the means to pay back all the money you have spent on me. I will hire a lawyer on my own account to deal with this."

"Rosa, you must not…"

"I am sorry your investment has not paid off for you."

"My dear girl, please!"

"Good day, Sir."

I fumbled with the door handle, desperate to get out now and shed some tears unseen by him.

Jasper stood in the passageway outside, his fists clenched by his sides, staring up at the ceiling. When he saw me he reached out for me, then, noticing the look on my face and the beginnings of tears, he took me in his arms.

The wild wind blew through the covered walkway, fanning sprays of raindrops over the flags.

"What is the matter, Rosebud?" he asked, holding me close, stroking my hair. "Hush, my love. Tell me what happened."

"Oh it was terrible. Worse than I expected," I wept.

"Does he refuse to release the inheritance? I shall speak to him. He will have to see me." Jasper made to knock on the door, but I stood between them, shaking my head.

"No, no, it is not that. It is worse than that. There is no inheritance."

Jasper frowned at me.

"I do not understand."

"All those years since I started at the Nuns' School, it was Grewgious paying for me. Grewgious' own money was set aside to be released after I married Eddy. He sees me as more than a ward – as a daughter of his own."

"He…you are saying that he has paid for you? Where is your father's money?"

"There was none. He gambled it away."

"You are sure of this? You saw the will? The relevant documents?"

"Oh…well, no. No, I didn't. But I believe him."

"You believe everything, Rosa. I am going to speak to him."

"Please, let us go now…"

"We must have sight of the documents."

He knocked again at the door, fit to wear a hole in the woodwork.

This time, an agitated Grewgious opened.

"Rosa, please reconsider…oh. Jasper."

"What is this tangled tale you have woven?" he demanded. "Where is her father's will?"

Grewgious, grey-faced and defeated, waved us both in.

He brought out all the paperwork, proving beyond doubt that his story was true and I stood to inherit nothing from my father.

In the silence that followed, Jasper was first to speak.

"Then I must thank you, Mr Grewgious, for your kind attentions to my wife in her hour of need. We both have much cause to be grateful to you."

Grewgious, taken aback, simply nodded.

"It is right and just," Jasper continued, "that you should consider your obligations towards her to be at an end. From now on, the task of providing for her is mine. You need have no concerns on that score, nor on behalf of her welfare. In time, we shall hope to repay your generosity, though you must understand that this may be a lengthy process. Choirmasters cannot hope to command the type of income lawyers can."

"I require no repayment," said Grewgious faintly.

"No, Sir, but I do. Thank you. Good day."

He led me out of the room. I looked over my shoulder at Grewgious, who had sunk into his armchair, apparently overwhelmed by the interview.

As was I.

"Shall we starve?" I asked timidly while he strode so swiftly through the Inns of Court that I had to trot along beside him, clinging to his arm.

"No, love," he said. "Of course not."

But he looked as grim as the skies, his brow low and his eyes clouded. Instead of walking back to Southwark, he took us towards St Pauls, intending, as he said, to enquire about work there, but when he emerged he said they had no vacancies.

"Can we go up to the Whispering Gallery?" I asked, wanting to salvage a little pleasantness from this awful day, but he shook his head and pulled me back down the steps. As we crossed the piazza at a speed that made every overworked muscle in my body complain most dreadfully, a woman called after us and began to give pursuit.

"Hey! Ain't you got a word for an old friend?"

I looked back over my shoulder to see a most unrespectable-looking creature, harried and ragged yet with a face painted as if she were on her way to a party.

I turned to Jasper.

"She thinks she knows you."

"She is deluded. Ignore her."

Yet his face was a picture of agitation.

"Who's your little friend, dearie? Is this your little Rosebud? You want to bring her over."

I stopped, but Jasper yanked me on, so hard I almost fell forwards.

"She knows my name…your name for me…"

"She is nobody. A lucky guess. Come."

"Fly back to your own Princess Puffer, my little singing bird."

Her voice faded into the howling wind as Jasper outpaced her, pulling me into the maze of streets around St Paul's, far away from her piteous cries.

Presently, we came to a coffee house and took shelter, seating our sodden selves in a booth where I crumpled, head on arms, and tried to make sense of everything that shadowed me.

"Your world has changed," he said with compassion. "But one thing in it is constant, and that is my love for you."

I looked up.

"Who was that woman?"

The gentleness of his expression was replaced by irritable unease.

"I have told you. Some deluded beggarwoman…"

"John Jasper, how can I rely on your love if I cannot rely on your honesty? I need you to be open with me. I need it more than I can say, having learnt that I have been kept in the dark all my life. Do I not deserve the truth?"

His mouth turned down and he took a dyspeptic sip of his coffee. He looked perfectly furious with me, but I was not to be browbeaten.

"She knew me," I continued, undaunted. "And she certainly knew you. 'Singing bird'. Who is she? Tell me or I shall leave this place and find her to ask her myself."

"You shall not," growled Jasper, but then he put down his cup and took a deep breath. "She is an opium dealer."

"Opium? I thought you got it from Mrs Crisparkle."

"No. She gave me laudanum from time to time. But my real addiction, the vice I have never confessed to, was the smoking of opium. There. You will wish to leave me."

"Oh, don't be melodramatic. You smoked opium. You bought it from this woman. How does she know about me though?"

"I smoked at her den, in Limehouse. I suppose sometimes, in the fever of my dreams, I may have mentioned your name. I have no recollection of it."

"You frequented an opium den? Merciful heavens, Jasper. Those places are full of killers and, and…opium smokers."

"Indeed." He half-smiled at my horror. "So you see how low I had sunk."

"And you dreamed of me, in your narcotic stupor. Oh dear. It is quite horrid to think of it – you, in an opium den, insensible and under the influence."

The image distressed me so that tears came again to my eyes. Oh, what a day this was for weeping. I felt quite cross with myself for falling prey once more.

"Love, I shall never go there again," he whispered, taking my hands and stroking the fingers. "I have no need now."

"But that awful woman knows my name. I feel quite…defiled."

"We need never see or hear from her again. Her mind is so addled with opium she will probably forget us within a few weeks."

"Is that what opium does to you? Destroys your brain?"

"I rather fear it does."

"How could you do it to yourself?"

"I wanted to lose my capacity for thought. I wanted to banish all self-consciousness and live in the golden haze until all was darkness."

"Oh, you mustn't ever speak like that. I can't bear to think of how unhappy you must have been."

"The unhappiness is past and gone, dearest love. You have sent it away. And now, I may have to work hard, but I shall be glad to, if it is for your sake rather than mine. If I have you to return to at the end of the day, I can withstand any hardship."

"You would never go back to opium, would you? Please, even if something happens to me, say you never will. You simply mustn't."

"I will consider your wish sacrosanct," he said. "And besides, the opium dreams do not compare to the real happiness of possessing you."

"Even if I come with no inheritance and a distinctly tragic pedigree?"

"Only the more so, because of that. I will make everything well for you."

Greatly daring, he leant over and kissed me, breaking apart before anybody could see us.

Outside the cobbles were slippery with churned mud, the rain beat and the wind whistled. I no longer knew who Rosa Bud had been. But I knew who Rosa Jasper was, and I was happy to be her.


	15. Chapter 15

**More angst…**

It was still windy, still cold, still wet and I had the additional pleasure of horrible stomach cramps all the way from Southwark to Gravesend, and then from Gravesend to Strood.

I tried to hold on to the remains of the night, visualising the time I had spent lying in Jasper's arms, working to make the most of our last few hours of pure togetherness. But Grewgious' revelations had preyed on my mind, as had the thought of Jasper in the opium den with that woman, and despite his most strenuous efforts to distract me, the cloud of unease had never quite lifted.

Those strenuous efforts were worthy of recall, though, bringing a flush to my cheek as I sat in the railway carriage with my arms tight around my lower stomach. Now my visitor was here, we would have to eschew those pleasures for a few days. How I resented it, although it was admittedly a relief to know that I did not expect a child.

The child of a penniless orphan and an opium fiend couldn't face the best prospects in life, after all. I felt a resurgence of unexpressed anger about all the opium business. How stupid it was of him to get involved in this sordid way of life. I wanted to go back in time and stand in front of the door of the opium den and slap his face as he tried to gain access to it. This, of course, would not be possible.

I gave Jasper a sidelong glance, trying to imagine what he'd do if I ever slapped his face. What would he do if I made him angry? The thought was enough to make me quail in advance, recalling the way he had dealt with Eddy outside the hotel, and then with me. Guilt at my strange thoughts made my hackles rise, and I hoped he couldn't really read my mind, the way I used to think he could during music lessons. He was sweetly oblivious, though, buried in the Illustrated London News, so it seemed unlikely.

"Are you nervous?" I asked him, needing the connection of conversation to turn my mind from its simmering anger.

"Of our reception in Cloisterham?" He put the paper down and reached for me. I drew closer to him, glad of his warmth. I loved him so much, and yet I was so fearful. I almost wanted to break apart from him and deny any of this – the elopement and all that followed - had ever happened. "Are you?"

"Yes, of course. I think it'll be horrible. Everyone will be awful. I want to go to sleep for a year and wake up when they've all forgotten about it."

"They _will_ forget about it," he said with gentle persuasiveness. "The marriage of two strangers has no significance beyond tittle-tattle. It will provide a moment of distraction, that's all. And we needn't stay for long. Only until I find another place of employ."

I laid my head on his shoulder. I hoped he would stay as calm as he purported to be about it all. I needed to be able to rely on him.

"Why opium?" I asked.

"Rosebud, for the love of heaven," he muttered. He knew my views on the subject inside out by now, but I still had questions.

"What made you consider it? It is unusual for a man in a respectable position like yours to visit an opium den."

"You think so?" He sighed. "I suppose you are right. Though it has been the inspiration of some of your favourite poets and musicians."

"Hmm."

"Berlioz. Have you heard his _Symphonie Fantastique_?"

"No, but I've often wanted to."

"The Witches' Sabbath. The March to the Scaffold – his dream of his own execution. All inspired by opium. Lord knows I've dreamt of my own execution often enough." He muttered this last in a curious undertone that made me feel queasy.

"Why would you do that?"

He shrugged.

"Have you read _Kubla Khan_?"

"I know, I know. Opium dreams. You haven't written any celestial music though."

"That isn't what I used it for."

"Well, answer my question then. Why did you choose it?"

"It chose me."

"_Really_?" I think my frustration amused him, which frustrated me all the more.

He patted my hand. I almost clawed at him.

"When I was eighteen, I took a trip to London with a friend. A fellow chorister."

"Not Charles?"

"No, not Charles. He was called Murdo and he was the closest friend I had at school, though he was expelled at fifteen."

"Expelled? Heavens."

"We both saw the malcontent in each other, I think. He had a wealthy family, so could afford to get himself thrown out. I didn't, so couldn't."

"Would you have done?" I asked, open-mouthed.

He smiled at me. "I honestly have no idea. Perhaps. With a family, I suspect I would have been a vastly different person, though, so I cannot say."

"So, this Murdo?"

"Although he was no longer at school, we continued to meet with each other on half-holidays. Thrilling adventures we had, sitting in the graveyard drinking stolen wine and lamenting our lots in life."

I laughed, despite my tetchy mood.

"You sound like the choirboy version of Kitty Mason."

"Yes, and talking about girls. There was a lot of talk…about girls…" He drifted into memory for a moment, his lips twitching.

"I hope it was proper."

"I fear it was not. My eighteenth birthday came and Murdo somehow contrived to get me an exeat and we went to London together, on a spree. That was when I tried opium for the first time."

"When you were eighteen? You've been smoking it for that long?" I was appalled.

"No. I tried it once, and all it did was make me feel sick, though it did help with some of the dark thoughts I had. I came back to Cloisterham and forgot all about it. Until last year. It came back to mind."

"When you met me?" I whispered.

He shut his eyes and nodded.

My throat closed and for a minute I thought I might faint with the magnitude of my love for him. Why must I love with this awful depth that made it so akin to fear?

"Do you know how desolate that makes me feel? To know that I unwittingly precipitated your descent into addiction?"

"Don't dare blame yourself," he said. "I shall not allow it."

He entwined his fingers with mine and clasped them tightly.

"Then I shall blame Murdo," I said. "But give me his address and I shall write him a strongly-worded missive on the matter."

"You will find him in Cloisterham churchyard."

"Oh! He is…?"

"Dead. Yes."

It seemed the last two days had been a catalogue of horrible deaths. My parents, Jasper's friend. How dark the world was, beneath its colourful surface. Why had I not known it could be so? Surely some warning should have been given in my seventeen years of life so I was not overwhelmed with the grim reality of existence all at once.

The train had reached the Kent Marshes, running parallel with the canal that separated Strood and Cloisterham. The roofs of Cloisterham, with the cathedral spire rising over all, came into view.

My heart plummeted and I hid my face in Jasper's sleeve, having no desire to see the familiar landscape.

"Come now, we are almost there," he said, unlacing our fingers and putting his hands to the sides of my head, prising it off him. He bent to look deep into my woebegone visage. "Soon the worst will be over, my love, and we will know how best to proceed."

"I do not want to face any of them," I said. "Even Helena, who has always been my friend."

"Be brave, Rosebud. Or if you cannot, let me be brave in your stead. There is no need for you to go anywhere or see anyone until you feel ready."

"Then they will think you have murdered me," I said with a brief and bitter laugh. "No. I will let Cloisterham see Mrs Jasper, and see that she is happy with her choice."

"For you to do so will mean the world to me," he said. He kissed my forehead, his lips maintaining their place on my brow until the train stopped and we must look to our baggage.

The Cloisterham omnibus sat on the concourse while people ran to it, umbrellas held aloft, hands on hats, keen to find shelter. I climbed aboard in haste while Jasper dealt with the cases, flouncing myself down in a corner.

Opposite me, two women were regaling each other loudly with the news of the moment. I wasn't much interested until one said: "And you've heard of the choirmaster up at the cathedral, I take it?"

"No, what of him?"

"Gone and made off with a Nuns' House girl, took her from her bed, so they say."

"He never did!"

I had stiffened and stared downwards at my lap, huddling in my corner as if that might make me invisible.

"Yes, kidnapped her and took her overseas, I've heard. She's one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country, of course."

"The monster!"

At that very moment, Jasper appeared on the step, a little wet from the rain but in all other respects very clearly that cathedral choirmaster of whom they so avidly spoke. One woman showed no sign of recognising him, but the other stared as if she had seen Banquo's ghost, then she jabbed her companion so sharply in the ribs that a coughing fit ensued. They both watched Jasper take his seat at my side, then they turned their faces to me, covertly, as if they had not just been discussing me for all the world to hear. I raised my eyes and scowled my fiercest scowl at them.

They were silent the rest of the journey.

Thank heavens the gatehouse lodge stood so close to where the omnibus set us down. I ran beneath the arch and hid myself on the postern stair until Jasper caught up with the bags and the keys.

Oh, how dark and cold and quiet the little lodging was, yet how it seemed to welcome me.

"Is there coal in the coal scuttle?" I shivered, lifting it and emptying a goodly amount into the grate.

"Yes," said Jasper absently.

I turned to find him opening an envelope that had been lying on the floor, pushed under the door.

"I'm not sure how to light a fire," I said, watching his face as he read the note within. "I have never done it for myself."

He said nothing, still reading, then raised his eyes above the paper and looked at me as if he had only just noticed my existence.

"The fire?" he said. "Oh. Sit down, my love. I'll attend to it."

"What does that note say?"

"It's from the Dean. I'm to call on him, the moment I return, it seems."

I swallowed and bit my lip while he fiddled with matches and paper, rearranging my mountain of coal and putting most of it back in the scuttle.

"That sounds…ominous."

"I presume he received my letter."

"Yes. Or, if not, one of our other correspondents has spoken to him. Or perhaps he, like the people on the omnibus, thinks you have abducted me for my fortune."

That bitter little laugh burst out again, sounding like the precursor to a sob this time.

"We needn't pay any mind to the nonsense people spout, Rosebud. We know the truth of the matter."

"Well," I said, watching the papers curl up in the flames and the coals start to glow. "I suppose you must go."

"Best to have it done with," he agreed. "I shall be as quick as I am able."

He had not even taken off his coat and hat yet, and he was to go back out into the wild wind and lashing rain.

"Don't fret," he said, tapping my cheek with chilled fingertips before pulling his gloves back on. "There is wine in the decanter if you want to pour yourself a glass. I don't suppose there's anything to eat… That can wait. Make yourself comfortable. You are awfully pale today."

"I am afraid," I said, leaping from the chair and flinging my arms around his neck, weeping on to his chest. He was a little taken aback, but he held me for as long as it took for my tears to subside. "I don't want you to go," I said.

"Hush. I know you imagine terrible things will happen, but they won't. The very worst that can happen is that I lose my job."

"And your house."

"Nobody will be sleeping on the streets, Rosebud. Calm yourself. Should you like to lie down for a while?"

"No." I let go of him, much as I wanted to cling forever. "No. You go. I shall wait. I know there will be no rest for me until you come back. So do hurry."

He smiled and ruffled my hair.

"Did ever a man have more to hurry back for?" he said, then he turned and left.

I went to the window and watched him walk towards the cathedral. People looked after him as he passed and sometimes pointed to him, bending their heads to exchange confidences. Then their eyes turned to the window, and I ducked behind the shutter, knowing that they were looking for me.

I crept back to the armchair, the cramps back with renewed vengeance, exacerbated by anxiety. I was rocking to and fro, my legs curled up beneath me, when there was a faint knock at the door.

I pretended not to hear it, but it came again.

"Who is there?"

"Only Mrs Tope, dearie, the verger's wife. May I come in?"

I had not expected to be receiving visitors and could have no idea why Mrs Tope might want to see me, but her voice sounded kind, so I bade her come in.

She was carrying a large covered basket which she set down on the table before coming to stand by the fire.

"Please do sit down," I said. "Excuse my not getting up – I'm a little indisposed at present." My words came out as gasps, so I think she believed me.

"Oh dear," she said, perching on the edge of the wooden seat opposite me. "Can I get you anything?"

"You're very kind but…I don't think so." The worst of the cramping receded and I was able to breathe again. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mrs Tope?"

"Oh, you're very sweet, I'm sure. And he's really married you? Excuse my asking…what on Earth am I thinking of?"

"Yes." I smiled. She really did seem quite friendly. I showed her my finger with the wedding ring on it. "So…might I enquire…?"

"Oh. Well, yes. The thing is, I've always been accustomed to doing for Mr Jasper."

"Doing for him?"

"Yes, dearie. You know, in the cooking and cleaning line."

"Oh! Oh, I see. Yes."

"But I suppose I won't be needed any more, now he has a wife of his own."

"I suppose…not." I looked around at the room. I had never seen a kitchen here. Was there one? "I will let you into a secret, though, Mrs Tope."

She leant forward eagerly, perhaps expecting some tidbit about my elopement. I was sorry to disappoint her, I was sure.

"I am not at all sure how to cook or clean. Or do any of those things. What would lighten my burden enormously would be a kind friend to perhaps show me what I should do. Do you think you could…?"

"Oh, I should be more than happy," exclaimed Mrs Tope. "More than happy to help. Why, you poor little thing, you're no more than a girl, are you? And bred to fine living, I've no doubt. Playing the piano and all. Mind you, he'll have you playing the piano, won't he, with him being a musician."

"I expect so. Should you like tea, Mrs Tope? I'm afraid I've no milk."

"Ah, yes, you have, dearie. That's what I'm here for. Emergency provisions. I felt sure, when I saw you two coming in, that you'd have nothing in to eat."

"Oh, you're an angel."

"No, you stay there, Miss, and I'll sort the kettle out."

She bustled and cossetted and generally mothered me while I lay palely beneath a shawl until I felt quite cosy and at peace.

When at last she turned to leave, having dusted down all the surfaces and changed the bedding and laid out some cake and bread and butter for Jasper's return, I thanked her with all my heart.

"Oh, it's just what I'm accustomed to, dearie," she said.

"No, not for that. For being so kind. I have so been dreading coming back here, and you have been a friend. I shall never forget it."

She clucked fondly at me. "Now that's none of my affair. We follow our hearts wherever they take us, don't we? And yours has brought you here. Well, I'm sure it's the will of God, my dear. Good afternoon. Do remember me to Mr Jasper and ask him if there's anything he needs of me. I wish you both well."

She shut the door behind her.

I was under no illusions. I knew that she would be straight off to the cathedral close to spread the tale of Mr Jasper's sickly wife, probably with a million embellishments of her own. But at least she would have some basis of truth to her account, unlike the spiteful tongues on the omnibus, and she seemed, at least, to be on our side.

It was not many minutes later before Jasper returned.

Despite my pains, I leapt up and ran to him. He was cold and wet and he tried to fend me off, laughingly, while he took off his coat and hat.

"You will take cold," he scolded.

"Never mind that. Oh, what happened? What did he say? Are you still choirmaster?"

"Sit down, sit down. Ah, food. And tea."

"Mrs Tope visited. Stop torturing me and tell me what our future might be."

He took a slice of bread and butter and bit into it, then cast around on the shelf for a teacup.

"Jasper!"

"Rosebud." He swallowed the bread. "It is well. All is well."

"How so?"

"The Dean has fought my corner, which I hardly expected him to do. The Bishop wanted me dismissed, thinking that I had compromised my position of moral authority at the choir school, but the Dean pointed out that all the choristers were on holiday and not back until Saturday, so they had no reason to know what had happened."

"But they will know. Surely they will find out."

"The most lurid rumours will die down over the course of the next few days," said Jasper. "Once people see that you are alive and in good spirits. It is expected that certain of the clergymen may protest, however, and I face some difficulties with the men of the choir."

"Why?"

"As I mentioned before, had I been ordained, elopement would be a transportable offence. They will find it difficult to accept that I can continue in my post regardless. I'm afraid in the eyes of many, I am no longer respectable."

"Respectable," I scoffed. "Cloisterham is such a hidebound little backwater."

"Pining for London now?" he said, smiling. "What has saved me is the hard work I have done with the choir. Cloisterham now has a reputation that the Dean is reluctant to relinquish. And so I keep my post."

"That is a great relief," I said. "This is no night to be wandering abroad with no home to go to."

It was darkening outside, the rain still hurling itself dismally against the panes.

"It would never have come to that," he said. He came to sit on the arm of my chair, his fingers tickling my neck. "And how are you feeling now?"

"Awful," I confessed. "But it will pass." I screwed up my face as a pang seared through my stomach.

"I could give you something that would help," he said.

I looked up.

"Could you?"

"If you'd like."

"I'd like _anything_ that would ease this pain."

He felt in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a bottle – oh!

"Laudanum!" I exclaimed, aghast.

"Doctors prescribe it for your symptoms," he said. "Do not look so horrified. Every medicine cabinet in the land contains it."

"Every medicine cabinet in the land does not belong to somebody with an addiction to it. You told me you had given up."

"I have given up smoking opium."

"But you still take this? How often? It must be very often if you carry it about with you like that."

"Rosebud, I will not be shouted at."

"I can't help myself. You promised me…"

"Do you think it is so easy to tear oneself away from? Do you? Do you know of the shivers, the pains, the fevers of withdrawal?"

"No." He looked quite terrifying, leaning over me, nightmares behind his eyes. I subsided back into my seat.

"I take the smallest of nips, every once in a while, just to keep the agonies at bay. That is all I do."

"But then you may never break free of it," I whispered.

"A gradual decline in its use may be more effective than stopping all at once," he said. "I have tried stopping all at once, at Christmas. I had to take some before I went to work, or I would have collapsed."

I opened my palm, wanting him to drop the bottle into my hand. He did so.

"And you would have me take this? When you know what it can do?"

"Rosa, once a month, to ease pain, is neither here nor there. You will not find yourself in thrall to it, as I do."

"In thrall to it? Oh, I hate it. I hate what it has done to you."

I wrapped my fingers around the vial and flung it, hard, into the fireplace, where it smashed into fragments and hissed into the flames, making them flare up rather magnificently.

Judging by Jasper's face, I might have just flung his own grandmother on to the fire. He started after it, even though it was gone, his hands outstretched towards the heat. Then he turned on me, furious.

"Why have you done that?"

"Because of the way you are acting now! Because it's so stupidly important to you – a little bottle of horrible brown stuff. So important to you that you are going to shout at me and make me wretched over it."

He stood up and went to the coat hooks instead, reaching for his scarf.

"Where are you going?"

"I will not shout at you. I will not make you wretched. But I will go to the apothecary."

I jumped out of the chair and stood in front of the door.

"No. No. Buy any more of that poison and I shall go to the Nuns' House and I won't come back."

"Step aside, Rosa."

"You do not believe me! I will. You will come back to find this place empty."

He put his hand around my arm, as if preparing to wrench me aside.

"So that is your wish? Laudanum is more to you than I am. So be it. Goodbye."

The remark pierced the shell of panic that having no laudanum to hand seemed to have constructed around him. He let go of me, staring in a kind of bewildered dismay before putting a hand to his face and staggering back.

He fell into the chair, head in both hands, and bent low, shivering. All at once, I realised that he wept, awful great heaving sobs.

"Jasper," I cried, running to him and throwing my arms about him. "Do not, please, do not be upset. It is only because I love you so much that I don't want to see you a slave to this poison."

He drew me on to his lap and hid his face in my neck, holding me so tightly I thought I might fracture before he collected himself and raised his head again.

"I know," he said. "I see what I am become and I will break this. I promise you, I will break it. With your help. Without you, I am lost."

"Of course I will help you. Of course."


	16. Chapter 16

Sleep was intermittent and light that night, and what little was to be had was taken in the armchair, myself on his lap, my head against his shoulder.

When we did not sleep, we spoke of our pasts. Mine as the beloved only child, then the golden-haired, over-indulged princess of the Nuns' House. His, so heartrendingly different. At first he shied away from speaking about it, but eventually I persuaded him that he could not continue to propagate his own fiction of a life that had only begun when we met – not if I was ever to understand what had driven him to opium and help him to overcome his demons.

"I grew up thinking there existed some essential deficiency within me that prevented the possibility of love," he said. "Of being loved, I mean, not of loving in return, for I was ever ridiculously quick to give my heart to the first person who tossed me a kind word."

"Oh, Jasper. Surely somebody must have loved you. Your sister?"

"She hated me. To have treated me the way she did, she must have hated me. That, at least, was the conclusion I drew in my four year old mind. When I look back now, I can see that I must have been an inconvenience to her. She a newly-wed bride, who had married well and wanted to make her way in society – I suppose I was a constant reminder of her humble beginnings."

"How unnatural she sounds. I never liked her, I'm sorry to say. She was so aloof and cold. And Captain Drood?"

"Strangely enough, things weren't so bad when he was home, although he was often away with the regiment. He seemed to curb Meg's worst excesses. She didn't lock me in the coal cellar for hours on end at least."

"Oh, Jasper, that is horrible! How could she be so cruel to a little boy?"

Jasper took a sip of his madeira wine, and offered the glass to me. The warm red liquid went some way to easing my pains and I drank it gratefully.

"I don't know," he sighed. "I didn't mind the beatings so much as the things she said to me. She told me I was a changeling and she threatened almost daily to leave me on the workhouse step. By the time I left that house, I was deeply and thoroughly convinced that I was not a child at all but some evil spirit forced on the world through a curse."

It had been a day for tears, and now here were more, splashing into the wine – mine, not his, for he was almost eerily philosophical about all this awfulness.

"I almost want to bring her back from the dead so I can kill her," I said.

"When it became clear that Edwin was on the way, she saw her chance to get rid of me and persuaded Captain Drood to pay my fees at the choir school. I didn't know whether to be relieved or desolate."

"Oh, relieved, I should think."

"You would. I can see why. But, for all the misery and pain, they were my only family, and I felt abandoned. Additionally, there was a very sweet young scullery maid whom Meg treated like a cur, but who was fond of me and whom I, in return, passionately adored. I wanted to take her with me. Indeed, I think I suggested to her that we run away to sea together. She turned me down. Ah, Mary-Ann. I wonder where she is now."

I found it amazing that he could smile and make nostalgic light of all this, but I supposed it was a long time ago and his life had changed for the better.

"When I arrived at the choir school, I was the only child who could not read. I had never been taught. And I didn't speak for the first three weeks either. I only sang. I think they were on the verge of sending me back to the Droods, but there was a good teacher there who took the trouble to try and draw me out instead of threatening me, which always made me twice as stubborn and unco-operative. Really, I was a dreadful child. I'm so glad you didn't know me then."

"I wish I had. I would have been your friend."

"I'm sure you would not. Nobody wanted to be my friend, and if they did, I made it extraordinarily difficult for them. I felt so…apart from everybody. As if I had no right to call myself a boy, because that's what they were, and I was not like them."

"She poisoned your mind against your own self."

"Yes, I think she did. And even when you can see it, from a mature and objective viewpoint, it's still so dreadfully difficult to pull the thorn from your heart, Rosebud. Somewhere at the very root of myself, I think I will always still believe it."

"You mustn't. It's what has driven you to all this darkness, Jasper. It is unfair."

"Your constant refrain. It's very sweet that you think the world can be fair. How guileless you are."

"Are you teasing me?"

"No, I'm complimenting you. I love you for it." He took the glass from me and drank again. I hoped it was not too salty.

"Was it better, at the choir school?"

"In some ways. The masters were decent enough. They weren't cruel. Some of the boys were, though. I got into a lot of fights. I was considered a troublemaker, although I never initiated the conflicts. My voice was my saving grace. Then I grew quite tall, very quickly, and suddenly nobody wanted to fight me any more."

I smiled up at him.

"I wouldn't want to fight you either, nor provoke your wrath. I have seen what it is like."

"I would never turn it on you, Rosebud."

"So you became the model pupil?"

"Hardly that. But I was quick at my lessons and first in the class at music and mathematics. There was talk of a choral scholarship elsewhere, but it was clear that Captain Drood wouldn't be supportive of a such a move and he expected me to start earning a living, so I stayed at Cloisterham and taught music to the younger boys. You might recall the sudden death of my predecessor, which left an unexpected vacancy. I was offered the temporary post and acquitted myself well enough to be given it on a permanent basis. And such is the story of my life – both dispiriting and dreary, until now, of course."

"You didn't deserve such vileness," I said.

He reached past me to refill the glass.

"It is still difficult for me to accept that sometimes. But I do accept that you don't deserve an opium-addicted husband. And, as it is my absolute mission in life to be the man you deserve, I vow it shall never again pass my lips."

"You should do it for your own sake too," I said. "The man I deserve is a man who has no need of opium because he is happy without it."

Jasper smiled to himself, as if something amused him.

"Did I say something diverting?"

"No. I was just remembering the way you used to be with Ned. A most peculiar, lisping, childish creature. I knew you were nothing of the kind underneath it all."

"Oh, don't remind me. What a horrid thing I was."

"You hid your true self from him, and you were afraid to show it to me at first, but in time…in time, you came out from behind that mask. It was quite wonderful to see. And even more wonderful that you are mine. I had almost despaired…"

"We have spoken enough of despair. Can we speak now of hope? What are your hopes?"

"Until this week, I had only one hope, and you were at the centre of it. Now that has been realised, I must try and dream up a few more."

"Yes, you must. Many more. Hold on to those hopes when the pains of withdrawal bite you the hardest."

I snuggled closer into him, yawning in my pleasant wine-induced lethargy. I fell asleep like that, by the low flames of the fire, held in his arms, feeling finally at peace after all the strains of the day.

I was awoken before dawn by him grinding his teeth and twitching furiously. I groped for the floor with a stockinged foot, thinking to go and lie on the bed instead as my neck ached, but he grasped my upper arm so painfully tight that I cried out.

"What?" he muttered. "What is it? You can't go."

He came to, eyes wide, so tormented and glassy that I was quite terrified, until he blinked them and shook his head, recognising me.

He loosened his grip and put the hand to his chest instead.

"Rosebud," he said, with some difficulty. He rummaged in his waistcoat pocket, then bent double, his head on his knees, whispering, "Oh no, no, no, no."

"Come to bed," I murmured, crouching before him and taking his hands. "Come and sleep."

"Sleep?" He hissed the word, raising his head and fixing me with such a piercing gaze that I wanted to let go of him and step back. "You have taken my sleep and thrown it on the fire."

"Don't, please. I know you want some of that stuff, but you can overcome this. You have my love."

"Your love will not ease this." He spoke in bursts. He was pale as marble and slick with sweat.

"All the times you must have taken it since we have been together, and I never noticed. When did you take it?"

"While…you slept…"

"What will help you? Please tell me. Shall I make tea?"

He groaned and his head collapsed to his knees again. He shivered.

"Tea. Oh God."

"At least come to bed. You must be cold."

To my vast relief, he stood when I tugged at his hands, although slowly, as if every bone in his body ached, which perhaps they did. He followed me into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. I took off his boots and he curled into a foetal ball, shuddering violently. Frightened and tearful, I tried to search the room in the dark for blankets, eventually locating them by touch in an ottoman under the window. I did not even pause to light a candle, so thrown into panic was I.

I covered him in the blankets, then tried to light a taper, but my fingers trembled so that I wasted several matches before the wick caught.

Now that I could see what I was doing, I tried to light the bedroom fire, remembering how Jasper had done it, laying paper on top of the cinders before adding the coal. It took me rather a long time, but eventually I succeeded and I sat back on my knees, watching the flame start to lick at the paper. I had not put everything far enough back in the grate, however, and smoke flew into the room, making me cough. Hastily I pushed everything further back with the shovel, my eyes stinging and cheeks burning.

When I stood up, my hands and skirts were black.

I felt so miserable I wanted to curl up beside Jasper and cry forever. I was hopeless. We would live in a hovel and Jasper would never get off the laudanum and everything would be perfectly dreadful forever.

I emptied the water jug into the basin and washed my hands and face, peering at the clock on the table, which read a quarter after five. Well, I would make tea anyway. Where had Mrs Tope found all the tea things?

A thorough poke around the lodgings revealed another room – one which I had thought no more than a cupboard, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a little windowless kitchen with a stove and a shelf or two, most of its floor space given over to a pantry. First one boiled the kettle, I believed. And then…the tea leaves went in the pot? And I would need a milk jug. And spoons.

Oh, it seemed too complicated. Perhaps I would give him a little brandy and water instead. That sounded like the kind of thing one gave a suffering husband.

I poured him a generous measure and went to offer it to him.

"My love," I whispered. "Will brandy help?"

"Unlikely," he shivered, but he struggled to sit up anyway.

I lifted it to his lips, in the way I imagined a brave nurse in the battlefield hospital would, but he snatched it from me, tutting.

"I am capable of taking a drink, Rosebud," he muttered. He finished it in one swig. "Perhaps another," he said.

I rather thought that drunkenness was not the cure for opium addiction, but I said nothing, not wanting to sound priggish or worsen his temper.

He took another, then disappeared beneath the covers again, yawning without cease.

"When light comes, I shall call out the doctor," I said.

"Good heavens, Rosebud, no. Do nothing of the kind," he said. "I shall certainly lose my post if it gets about town that I am an opium eater."

"I did not think of that. Then what should I do? I want so much to help you."

"Let's try to sleep," he suggested.

I looked, with some silly pride, at the fire now burning steadily in the grate, and blew out the candle. Taking off my boots to lie beside him, I reflected that this was not the way I had dreamed of spending the first night in our marital bed, the pair of us fully-clothed and him in the grim clutches of opium withdrawal.

Surely it would get better. Surely it could not get worse.

The next time I looked at the clock, it was almost half past seven. It was still dark, but the dawn would not be long in coming. The rain had eased, and so had the wind, rendering the light greyish rather than pitch black. Jasper was asleep.

I crept out of bed, went over to the fire and set to removing my grubby clothes. By the time I had washed, dressed and put up my hair, rather haphazardly and missing the assistance of a nuns' girl or Jessy, Jasper was awake.

I knelt by the bed, noticing again, to my dismay, that he looked every bit as ill as he had done earlier.

"You should stay at home today," I said. "You will not be needed at the cathedral until Saturday."

"The music…I must meet with the organist…"

"You are ill. I can send them a message. Shall I find you some breakfast?"

"No, I'm not hungry." He sat up and flung off the covers. "Where are my boots?"

"Surely you are not going out?"

"My boots, Rosebud. Where have you put them?"

He had risen from the bed and was opening drawers and cupboards in a fury, slamming them shut when they did not yield what he sought.

"They don't need you at matins…"

"I'm not going to matins." He found the boots and sat down on the bed to pull them on.

"Then where?"

He would not answer me.

"You are not going to get laudanum. You are not!"

"I cannot…you don't know the agonies, Rosebud…and it will only get worse…"

"If you take it again, it will never end."

He stood up.

"Just once more," he said. "One more bottle."

I shook my head, breathing hard, and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. I took the big bunch of keys from the hook by the fireplace, opened the door at the top of the stairs then locked it after I left. I ran down and did the same with the external door in the archway. If Jasper wanted to go to the apothecary, he would have to kick his way through two locked doors.

I stood on the slimy cobbles, pulse racing, head bursting with the enormity of what I was doing, and wondered where on Earth I would find help. A few deep breaths brought clarity, and I took to my heels and ran towards the cathedral.

Behind me, I heard the gatehouse window open. He shouted my name, so angrily that I stumbled, but I did not stop until I had reached Minor Canon Corner and the house of Reverend Crisparkle.

Welcoming light flickered in the front window and I hammered at the door, hoping that the Reverend was up, and not just the servants.

He came to the door himself, his face a picture of shock and concern.

"Why, Miss Bud," he said. "Whatever can the matter be? Please, come in."

"No, no," I gasped, half-sobbing. "You must come with me. Please. Please help me. You have always been his friend."

"Something has happened to Jasper?"

"Oh, I beg of you, please come before he gets out."

"Before he…?"

Crisparkle was already pulling his coat and hat from the pegs.

"Mother," he called back down the passageway. "I have to go out. Could you tell the Dean an emergency has arisen?"

I heard her bustle towards the hall and I hid myself away from the door so I would not be seen. As soon as Crisparkle was out of the house, I started to run again, but he took hold of me, stilling me, and stood on the path with his hands on my shoulders, clearly expecting more information.

"Now keep still for one moment, Miss Bud, and tell me whatever is amiss."

"Did you not get his letter?"

"Yes, I did."

"We are married."

"Yes, you are," he said with a grimace. "But that isn't the problem, presumably. So, what is?"

"I have locked him in the gatehouse."

"Why? Tell me he has not raised his hand to you. Miss Bud, if he has―"

"No. It is the only way I can stop him buying laudanum."

"Ah." He released one shoulder to smite his brow. "Yes. It has gone that far?"

"You knew your mother gave it to him."

"We have had strong words on the subject before. And now he cannot break the habit?"

"No, indeed. He promised me last night it would never touch his lips again, and now he has woken up this morning with no other thought in his head but getting his hands on some."

"Oh, my dear. So you locked him in?"

"Yes, and now I don't know what to do. I daren't go back. I cannot stop him doing anything. But I thought perhaps another man…"

"Come on." He took my arm and we hurried away along the walk to the gatehouse. "I feared something of this nature."

"What can I do, Reverend Crisparkle?"

"Well, you can count on my help, Miss, that is, Mrs Jasper."

"You may call me Rosa. You are his friend."

"Thank you. I think perhaps, from what I've read, this may take a day or two, or longer, depending on how much of the stuff he was taking."

"He said he had been trying a gradual withdrawal, decreasing the dosage."

"Then with luck the process will not be too severe. It will be harrowing, Rosa, I cannot say otherwise, but we can help him."

"Oh dear. I fear he will hate me for this."

"Surely once all the poison is out of his body he will see that you have acted out of the purest and most disinterested love for him. How could he hate you for that?"

"I just wish these next few days could pass quickly and be over."

The gatehouse came into view and my heart thundered. It did not seem that the lower door had been kicked open, but neither did I see his face at the window.

"One of us shall be with him at all times of day until the crisis is past," said Crisparkle. "Now, if you will give me the keys, I will go up and speak with him."

I handed them over, looking mutely at him for a word of reassurance.

"He is fortunate to have you for his wife," he said kindly. "I cannot claim to approve of your precipitate actions in eloping, but at least, if we cure him of this, some good has come of them. Now, do not worry. He will survive."

I watched Crisparkle unlock the lower door, but I could not stay. I escaped through the arch and wandered up and down the High Street until a quarter hour had passed, then I went back to the gatehouse. The lower door stood open and I crept up the stairs and put my ear to the inner entrance, listening for clues.

I heard low voices but could not make out the words. When a footstep drew close to the door, I scampered back down the steps and waited in the arch.

I heard the door open and shut, and the key turn again, then somebody came down. The Reverend Crisparkle carried with him a large coal sack over his shoulder.

"How is he?" I asked, fearful of his reply. "Shall he kill me?"

"No." Crisparkle laughed. "Nothing of the kind. He bears you no ill will whatsoever, and seems most earnest in his desire to wean himself off the stuff. But, sincere as his protestations were, I thought I should take a few precautions."

He opened the sack for me to peer inside. Jasper's boots and all of his clothes were piled up, including his wallet containing, I presumed, all his money. I put my hands to my mouth and looked back up at Reverend Crisparkle.

"Is he furious?"

"He ranted and raved for a few minutes, but then seemed to lack the energy to continue," said Crisparkle. "By the time I left, he appeared quite resigned to the situation. Now, I must go and prepare for morning eucharist. I shall return directly afterwards and stay with him while you go about your business. I'm afraid for the next day or so you will need to apply to me for funds, but of course they will be readily given."

"I will need to buy food."

"Of course. Can you wait a few hours?"

"I think so. We have bread, butter, some cold meat, cheese, I think. Apples."

"Good. Now, Rosa, you must be forewarned. He will try to persuade you to go to the apothecary for him. He may essay any number of duplicitous gambits. You must maintain your resolve and be watchful. Addiction makes liars and cheats of all men, and Jasper is no different."

"Oh dear."

"This is why I have taken the precaution of looking after your money. If you have none, he cannot try to make you spend it."

"I dread going in there."

"I will come with you. When I return later, I will bring some remedies from mother's medicine cabinet – the kind of thing one would take for influenza, which his symptoms resemble."

We climbed the stair, but Crisparkle left the sack of clothes at the bottom. He entered the room before me, but there was no need for me to fear, for it was empty. Jasper must have taken himself back to bed. When I looked around the bedroom door, he was asleep again, underneath every blanket in the house.

And so began the most difficult three days of my life.

**Oh dear God, I am emotionally drained. I'm going to try and get the whole withdrawal misery over in one paragraph in the next chapter before I have to crack open the antidepressants for myself…thanks for reading, and sorry it's such a downer just now. I have to get this opium issue out of the way, though – for my sake as well as Jasper's. I just _worry_ about him, y'know ;).**


	17. Chapter 17

When he came to the bedroom door, I thought I saw a ghost. His skin matched his nightshirt in shade, though the texture differed – the skin clammy, the shirt clinging to him in patches.

I had been putting out what was left of our food on the table, hoping he might be persuaded to take some, and I started on seeing him, then shrank back, appalled by his spectral appearance. He had to hold on to the door frame to remain upright and he leant his head on it. Something about his eyes was different, as if he had sunk inside himself.

"Rosebud," he whispered.

"Come and sit by the fire." I waved my hand at the armchair. "You must be hungry by now."

"Only one thing can help me," he said.

"No."

"I shall die."

"You shall not die. It will get better."

"I cannot bear any more…" He clutched at his stomach and bent double, suddenly and violently, falling on to his hands and knees.

I ran to him. He was clawing at the floorboards.

"You see, I am dying," he said in a low, cracked voice.

"Go back to bed. I will bring you food and drink. Please try to take some."

A terrible fear that perhaps this illness _could_ kill pervaded me to the extent that I considered running to Crisparkle and getting some money. Would the fever spiral to a dangerous height?

I put my arms about him, trying to lift him to his feet, but he pushed me off.

"I don't want you to see me thus," he said, and there were tears in his eyes. "Do not come near me."

Somehow he made his way back into the bedroom. I sat down on the armchair and wept until Crisparkle returned.

"Oh, Rosa," he said, twisting his hands sympathetically when he saw my tear-wrecked visage. "Is he no better?"

I shook my head. "Could a person die from this malaise?"

"I do not believe so. Only when they have gone back to opium after some time off it and found themselves incapable of absorbing the dosage. As long as he does not do that, he will get well. This day will be the worst. Why don't you get yourself out into the fresh air? Visit the shops and buy some provisions. Here."

He gave me some money and I took his advice.

And so our vigil continued. We took turns to guard our poor, broken charge until he started to mend. He would not let me see him and stayed in the bedroom for the entirety of that first day, while I slept in the armchair and occupied myself by trying my hand at various unfamiliar household tasks.

On the second day, just after dawn, Jasper appeared at the doorway with a ghastly smile and his eyes over-bright.

"How are you feeling, love?" I asked, rising from the chair, reaching for the kettle, at the boiling of which I had become quite proficient.

"Why, I am much improved," he said. "I think I shall go to the cathedral. Would you run to Crisparkle's and fetch my clothes?" His voice was breathy and uneven.

I bit my lip, looking him up and down. Sweat was still beaded on his brow. He held himself with such extraordinary tension it was clear he was making every effort not to shiver.

"John, you are not well. Not yet. I'm sorry. I shall wait for Crisparkle and see what he thinks."

His brow darkened and he took a few steps towards me, but he staggered before he could reach me, for he had eaten nothing, and had to hold on to the chimney breast.

"Oh, you must eat something," I exclaimed.

"Eat something, yes," he rasped, his face livid in every sense of the word. "Opium."

"Do not ask me to do this. I will not."

He grasped a poker from the fireplace and I screamed, leaping backwards so that I fell against the table, knocking off the loaf of bread.

For a moment he brandished the poker, looking truly murderous, before dropping it in the ashes and hiding his face in his hands.

"Oh God," he intoned. He dropped into the armchair and held his head between his knees, breathing short, shuddering breaths.

I picked up the kettle, put it on the hearth to boil, then I put my hand timidly on his back.

"How can you bear to touch me?" he demanded, speaking into his knees still. "How can you bear to come near me? I am a monstrous creature."

"Something much stronger than you has control of your body and soul," I said. "But you are conquering it. Slowly, yes, but you are driving it out. It is taking all your strength, but it will soon be gone."

"You will hate me."

"No, my love, I will be proud of you and love you all the more. Which is a great deal."

He put out a hand, blindly seeking me. I took it and held it so tightly.

"I am your husband. I am meant to care for you and protect you from the evils of the world. I have failed. How can I call myself a man?"

"Very soon, we will be able to put this behind us. You prove yourself more than a man every minute you continue without opium. You do, indeed. Please do not rail at yourself."

For the first time since this exhausting odyssey had begun, I was able to convince him to eat something. We sat together by the fire, wordless and locked in our own sad worlds, until Crisparkle arrived to relieve me.

"My mother would be very glad to give you some lunch," he said. "Why don't you spend an hour with her? Some friendly female company might cheer you."

"Might…Mr Landless…be there?"

"No, he will be taking his Greek class at the choir school this afternoon."

Mrs Crisparkle provided a tonic for my spirits, although she was suitably sheepish about her facilitation of Jasper's laudanum habit. She was genuinely happy about our marriage, which surprised me.

"I've always wanted him to find a nice girl," she confided. "Ever since he came to the choir school. He never had anybody – stuck there on his own all summer. Such a lonely life he's led. But now he has you, and you will be the making of him, I am sure."

She buoyed my fading confidence and even provided me with a snippet of interesting gossip. Apparently, Reverend Crisparkle had been Helena's most assiduous comforter after I went missing from the Nuns' House. Mrs Crisparkle even went so far as to voice a belief that there might be an Understanding between them soon.

Despite my dread of Helena's recriminations, which kept me from the Nuns' House door, I was delighted to hear of this and hoped very much that it might come to pass.

So I returned to the gatehouse with a lighter step, determined to quiz Crisparkle on the Helena question, albeit subtly.

He and Jasper were playing backgammon, though Jasper's hand kept twitching and knocking the pieces over the board, when I entered the room. This seemed like a positive development.

"How was mother?" asked Crisparkle, looking up and smiling.

"Very well. I have paid my first call as a married woman. But I do not think I will get such a friendly reception at the Nuns' House."

"Oh, why not?"

Jasper coughed, shiveringly, and said, "Miss Twinkleton was very strongly against our liaison."

"And I am afraid I have hurt Helena more than she can forgive."

Crisparkle's cheeks definitely grew pinker.

"Oh no," he said. "I am sure that is not the case. Helena's greatest hope was always for your safety. I believe she knew how attached you were to Jasper."

"You have spoken of this with her?"

"She is a frequent visitor at the house, with her brother being resident there."

"I am glad you were able to comfort her."

"Oh, I'm sure it was nothing more than…ah, Jasper, you appear to have me. Rosa, never play backgammon with your husband. Or chess, for that matter, nor yet any game requiring the exercise of wits."

I smiled at his fluster, satisfied that his interest in Helena was no figment of his mother's imagination.

"Now, Jasper," he said, rising. "Do you want me to bring more of mother's patent remedies when I return later?"

"Why not?" he muttered, fidgeting rather compulsively with the backgammon counters. "Preferably something that will induce oblivion."

"I will send Mrs Tope round to help you out," said Crisparkle on the way out. "You can tell her Jasper has influenza, she will know no different."

Jasper hid from my view again, skulking off into the bedroom as soon as Crisparkle left.

Somehow we survived the long, dark hours of that January day. Mrs Tope gave the lodgings a top-to-bottom clean while I tried to peel potatoes without peeling myself. Crisparkle returned for the evening, but Jasper did not leave the bedroom, though he did eat some mashed potato and drank about a quart of strong wine.

When I looked in on him, after my own solitary supper, he had the blanket pulled over his face, but I think he was awake. I lit another candle and took a book from his shelf. _Frankenstein._ Perhaps I should not be reading about monsters after dark, but I felt nothing could frighten me any more. I fell asleep with the book on my lap and the keys inside my boot.

On the third day he rose again.

Not quite a glorious resurrection but, though still wan and desperately ill-looking, he had stopped shaking and the stomach cramps seemed to have eased. He ate breakfast – a good-sized breakfast – and drank three cups of tea and then slept for the rest of the day.

Crisparkle said he was over the worst, but his mood might be low for a while longer. I spent the day by the fire, reading, or trying to darn things, or heating the kettle over and over again so Jasper could have a bath which, to tell the truth, he needed.

I put the bath by the fire and he lay in it while I cleared up the supper things.

"Tomorrow I shall go to the cathedral," he said. His voice was his again, though a little weaker than I was accustomed to. "Meet with the organist. Rehearse the choir. Choose the music." He shut his eyes. "All those things I used to find so tedious. I am actually looking forward to doing them."

"You are? Oh, that is so wonderful to hear. And you are truly feeling that the worst has passed?"

"There is no more pain, just weakness and exhaustion, which needs only sleep to remedy it."

I went to sit on the floor beside him, resting my chin on the side of the tub.

"You have come back to me," I said.

He ruffled my hair with wet fingers.

"I feared you might not want me to."

"My only fear was that you would live forever in slavery to opium. I could not have watched you give your life to it."

"Now I can be free. And you have been so brave, Rosebud. I had no idea you possessed such strength of purpose."

"It was always said of me at the Nuns' House that whenever Rosa Bud set her mind to something, it came to pass."

He smiled tiredly. "A force to be reckoned with," he said, yawning. "Now, pass me that towel. I am for bed. And tomorrow, our lives can start anew."

On Saturday morning I woke up in the bed I would share ever after with my husband for the first time.

But he wasn't there.

I experienced a moment of griping, visceral panic; a pain at the pit of my stomach. _He is out buying laudanum_.

Then I heard the music and I shed tears of relief. He was at the piano.

It was not yet quite light. I lay for a while, listening to him play a piece I did not know. He stumbled over a passage and cursed and started again. He sounded completely himself.

I got out of bed and reached for my dressing gown and slippers. I opened the door slowly and quietly, not wishing to disturb him, and watched him at the instrument. Even in the low candlelight I could see that there was colour in his face. His fingers were not quite as sure and swift as they had been at our lessons, but they grew in confidence as he played on.

I drew closer, enchanted by the passion of the piece he played, and his own deep connection with the music. Hearing it, I could not doubt that he was well again and I felt as if my heart would burst with joy and love.

His fingers disobeyed his will once more and he shook his head, frowning, and looked up, seeing me.

"Rosebud. Did I wake you?"

"That is a lovely piece. I do not know it."

"It's by Schumann. Fantasy in C. I'm afraid my playing is a little rusty. It is too long since I touched a keyboard."

"I love to hear you play. You put everything of yourself into the music."

He closed his score and stood up, holding out his hands to me.

"It is too long since I touched something else too," he said, his voice low and caressing.

To take his hands and find them warm again, and firm and strong, was heaven indeed. I stepped willingly into his embrace. I had given him my shelter while he ailed, and now he offered his to me. It was a homecoming.

When we kissed, it was like that first time again, before the fire in the Nuns' House parlour, so many strange and new feelings uncurling from my heart and scattering around my body. The broken creature had gone and the whole man reasserted himself, with one hand at the back of my neck and his lips pressed to mine.

While the dark around us transformed by imperceptible stages to cloudy light, we tumbled into bed, drunk with desire, faint with need, seeking each other. Kissing and entwining, we held each other close until he lifted my leg over his hip and, both of us lying on our sides facing one another, entered me. I felt I might die with the familiar yet astonishing rapture of it, feeling him push his way higher while he hushed my mouth with his tongue.

He thrust inside me, deep, strong moves and yet so controlled. His hand negotiated the complexities of our limbs to snake its way between my nether lips, and his thumb circled and rubbed within as he kept up his rhythm. He released my mouth and put his lips to my neck, nipping and sucking.

"I want you to come for me, Rosebud," he whispered, savagely, into my ear, and although I scarcely knew what he meant, that moment released the pressure from inside me and I began to spin into the maelstrom of pure pleasure, wrapping my leg so tight around his hip that I fear I strained the muscle.

He held my cheek as I sighed out my bliss, watching me. My own vision was misted by the force of my undoing, but I still perceived how rapaciously intent was his gaze.

"Yes," he said. "Like that." And then he turned me on to my back and thrust faster, until that mask of pained adoration transformed his face and he spent inside me.

We lay, happy and flushed and at peace, until knocking at the door dragged us out of our warm glow.

"Crisparkle," I whispered.

"Dear fellow. He has been a good friend to me, but I wish he might just go away."

I giggled.

"Can you not take another day off?"

He sat up, sighing, running fingers through his hair.

"There is so much to be done," he said. "But make no mistake, when it is all dealt with, I will be back here to deal with you. I will expect you to be here, in bed, waiting for me."

"Jasper!"

"Or there will be trouble, mark my words." He kissed me, dragged on his dressing gown and went to answer the door.

I huddled up inside the covers, beaming at the winter sun. My husband was back.


	18. Chapter 18

"I daresay a few people will want to take a look at you, but I'm sure nobody will speak out of turn. Now, put on your cloak, child, or we shall be late."

I was too nervous to speak, even to express my bottomless gratitude to Mrs Crisparkle, who had offered to accompany me to the Sunday cathedral eucharist. It was my first public appearance as Mrs Jasper and I wanted nothing more than to hide my face in a hood and pass myself off as some anonymous visitor to Cloisterham.

This would defeat the object of the excursion, however. If nobody ever saw me, the intrigue and interest would merely grow until it broke all bounds of restraint. There was nothing for it but to show myself.

I wrapped myself tight in my cloak and left the Crisparkle house arm in arm with its mistress. The Reverend had left some ten minutes earlier, and Jasper had been at the cathedral since early morning, leaving me yawning over the breakfast things.

The low winter sunshine, coupled with a brisk breeze, conspired to elevate my spirits a little as we trudged along the gravel towards the great arched door.

"Jasper had quite a time of it with the choir yesterday," I confided anxiously. "There was near-mutiny."

"Oh dear," said Mrs Crisparkle. "We rather expected some trouble, I'm afraid."

"He quelled it, or so he told me, but there was much laying down of the law involved. I am so afraid somebody will say something that will cause him to lose his temper."

"Dear girl, let us hope that the men of the choir were merely exercising their right to express their opinions and will now be content at having done so."

"What if they all leave en masse?"

"Well, that would be very dramatic but rather foolish, for they would be the losers."

"That's true enough."

We were in the Close proper now, milling through knots of worshippers. There was much tipping of hats to Mrs Crisparkle, coupled with keen efforts to look me up and down without appearing too obvious.

A pair of young women skipped past us and I heard one say, "That's her!"

Her companion replied, "Good society will never accept them."

Then good society could go hang, I thought rebelliously. What was so good about it anyway?

Passing through the cathedral doors, I looked instinctively to the left, towards the group of pews reserved for the Nuns' House. They were occupied, all the bonnetted heads bending and swaying while the girls whispered. Almost all of their eyes were on the choir, or rather Jasper, who was in the nearest choir stall, feigning oblivion.

The sight of him, in his robes, hands folded in his lap, made my heart flip and a ridiculously broad smile break out on my face, despite my fears. I would never take back what had passed and I had not the smallest regret. I had only to look at him to know that I had done right.

I was still smiling dreamily when the bonnets of the Nuns' House turned sharply towards me.

"Rosy!"

Kitty Mason, sitting closest to the aisle, rose to her feet, her eyes aflame with excitement and mischief, but Miss Tisher slapped her down with her gloves immediately. The damage was done, though, for a deafening chorus of whispers and giggles sent their stir through the cathedral. Within a second, every eye in the place was upon me. This constituted a great many eyes, for I had only seen the cathedral this full at Christmas and Easter. Could it be that Jasper and I had inspired a resurgence in religious observance here in Cloisterham? It would almost be amusing, were I inclined to be amused.

The commotion reached Jasper's notice and his eye followed me along the aisle and into the Crisparkle pew, where Neville Landless already sat, scowling darkly. Once I was seated, Jasper smiled complicit encouragement and then stood, for the organist had reached the end of his piece and the service was about to start.

As long as it continued, I was safe. I could be the recipient of curious looks but nothing more. And I was near enough to the front of the church not to see most of what happened around me. Besides, I was too tired. I found myself close to nodding off in the pew during the sermon, for I had passed a most fatiguing night, every one of Jasper's neglected appetites having returned in full measure following his recovery.

I woke up for the anthem. Despite having seen as much of Jasper as it was possible to see during the course of the preceding twenty four hours, I could never feel I had seen enough of him. I wanted to watch him, drink him in, be near him. It was like a fever, but of a blissful kind. I did not think any opium dream could be better.

I had fears that the choir's rebellious spirit might mar their music, but their rendition of Thomas Tallis' If Ye Love Me was flawlessly beautiful, perhaps even better than usual, and Jasper conducted with every whit of his customary finesse. Perhaps it was all a storm in a teacup after all, and we could settle into a pleasantly humdrum existence here in Cloisterham. I would pay calls and manage the household accounts and Jasper would still be the much admired lay precentor, enjoying the patronage of the mayor and his aldermen, as he always had done. Nothing seemed more attractive to me than comfortable domestic boredom, though the previous days of terror and exhaustion probably coloured this attitude more than a little.

If we could only live somewhere lighter and more spacious than that poky gatehouse. I pictured a cottage on the outskirts of the town, roses round the door, good china, vases of flowers, musical evenings (at which I did not have to sing or play), new gowns, a kitten, a cherry tree…

Mrs Crisparkle nudged me awake. Everybody along the row was casting me sly sidelong glances, nudging their neighbours, and so were the choristers.

It seemed that the service was all but over, and I had dreamed my way through the final minutes. I blushed and hid my face in my prayer book, mortified to have made myself even more obtrusive, when the opposite had been my intention.

People were rising from the pews and the choir began to process out.

"Shall we wait here for Mr Jasper?" suggested Mrs Crisparkle.

"Oh, yes. I'd prefer not to stand anywhere too noticeable," I admitted. I watched the Nuns' girls filing out. Helena made as if to come over to me, but Miss Twinkleton took her shoulder and directed her firmly away towards the back door.

I gasped with dismay.

"Helena will be joining us for lunch," said Mrs Crisparkle, observing it.

"Truly?"

"Yes, of course. We have had her every Sunday. What a party we shall be – you and Mr Jasper, the Landlesses. Why, we shall be quite jolly, I am sure."

"Yes," I said, heartened again. Helena had wanted to speak to me. This was a most encouraging sign.

"She was so frightened when she did not know where you were," said Neville seethingly.

I did not know how to reply to him. He seemed extremely angry, considering he hardly knew me. I thought back to how he had discovered Jasper and I kissing on Christmas Day and twitched with irritation. What business had it been of his anyway?

"Well, all's well that ends well," soothed Mrs Crisparkle.

The Reverend came to join our little group as we stood self-consciously in the side aisle, trying not to attract attention and failing. Running footsteps behind me caused me to swing around, seeking their source. It was Kitty Mason, who had broken away from the Nuns' girls, apparently desperate to speak to me.

"Rosy!" she exclaimed, pulling up short and almost jumping up and down in her excitement. "You dark horse! When were you going to confess?"

"Confess?"

I could not help but smile at her infectious high spirits.

"Yes! I left school in November with your professions of dire loathing of Mr Jasper ringing in my ears and I return in January to find you married to him. That requires a confession, does it not?"

"I scarcely know what to say."

"Did he mesmerise you? Oh, Mr Jasper. I do beg your pardon. I did not see you."

For my husband now stood at my elbow, and had taken my arm.

"I fear mesmerism is not amongst my skills," he said, a trifle coldly.

"_Miss Mason!_"

Miss Twinkleton stood, bonnet quivering with agitation, at the end of the aisle.

"Dash it," said Kitty. "Better go. But you will visit me and tell all, won't you? It's the best thing that's _ever _happened in the history of Cloisterham. And to think, barely three months ago you made me sprain your wrist for you, just so you could cut your lesson with him. Cheery bye!"

She scampered off and I risked a glance at Jasper, who raised his eyebrow back at me.

"I suspected at the time you did it on purpose," he said. "Well, well."

"Oh dear," I said.

He took my arm and we set off at the tail end of the party while Neville Landless stormed ahead, the Crisparkles keeping between us.

On the cathedral steps, Mayor Sapsea stood regaling some patently unenthralled people with his opinions of this and that. Jasper raised his hat in passing, but the Mayor pointedly turned his back on us.

"Fat fool," muttered Jasper under his breath.

"Pay him no mind," I said. "You have no need of his approval."

"I know," Jasper said. "Thank God I will never more have to attend his tedious supper parties. He had me singing patriotic songs about John Bull until I was hoarse. I shall not miss it in the slightest."

I patted his forearm, trying to suppress unruly laughter.

"What is funny?"

"I cannot for the life of me imagine you singing patriotic songs about John Bull." A giggle escaped my lips.

"No? And shall you be so amused, I wonder, at your piano lesson this afternoon?"

"My piano lesson? Oh no!"

His answering smile contained a distinctly sadistic quality. "Oh yes," he said. "Scales. Arpeggios. Czerny."

"This is because of what Kitty Mason said, isn't it?"

His only reply was to place his free hand over my fingers and increase the pace of his walking. We were almost at the Crisparkles' house, I realised, and I had barely noticed the eyes of the passers-by on me, so absorbed had I been in Jasper's company.

I had taken the first and most difficult step and found it substantially easier than I had expected. Partly because I had fallen asleep for most of it, admittedly.

I was on the receiving end of much joshing at the luncheon table over my inability to stay awake, but by then I was in such a happy frame of mind that I simply laughed in concert with everyone else. For Helena and I were friends again, and all could be well in the world.

The others had discreetly left us to walk in the garden while they listened to Jasper play the piano indoors.

"I wish I had left you a note," I burst out, as soon as we were alone.

"I knew what you had done. It could have been nothing else. At least, I _hoped_ it was what you had done."

"You hoped for it?"

"The alternative was that he had taken you somewhere without intending to marry you. Once I knew that wasn't the case, I could rest easier."

"Oh, I see."

"He could so easily have done that, Rosa. You were so deeply under his spell. I can only thank God he is not a less scrupulous man."

"He would not have done that. I knew he was not that kind of man."

"That kind of man is often difficult to tell apart from the other."

"Well," I said, puffing my cheeks. "I suppose I have a guardian angel then. Dare I hope that we can still be friends?"

She took my hand.

"I am disappointed that you doubted it," she said.

We embraced wholeheartedly, until the cold sent us hurrying indoors to the smell of roast beef and the sound of the piano.

It was not until we were all seated around the table and I noted Crisparkle taking his place beside Helena that I kicked myself for missing my opportunity to quiz her about it. He was solicitous towards her in a hundred little ways and she looked as pink as her dusky cheeks would allow. Sometimes her eyes met my smile across the table and she almost shook her head, as if begging me not to notice the obvious connection between them.

Mrs Crisparkle was absolutely right, I surmised. Understanding was written all over the pair of them.

Only Neville's sullen physiognomy detracted from the gaiety of the table. He looked daggers at Jasper so often that I began to fear he plotted murder. Nothing could ruin this first social engagement of my married life, however. Every time Jasper passed me the gravy boat or refilled my wine glass I felt a glow of absolute happiness. He was faultlessly attentive, to the point that Mrs Crisparkle kept cooing at us and shaking her head fondly at the romance of it all. Would it always be like this? I hoped so.

"I swear, I have never seen two people so much in love," she sighed, rising with difficulty after the apple crumble. "It warms my heart."

I thought of suggesting she take a good look at her son and Helena, but that would have been terribly indelicate.

Neville almost choked on his wine, pushed back his chair abruptly and went to stand by the window.

"Well, shall we walk off all this fine food and drink?" suggested Crisparkle, clearly eager to offer his arm to Helena, since he stood closer to her than her brother.

We took a stately walk along the wide path that led to the High Street. I was highly conscious of all the stopping and staring that took place when Jasper and I passed, but eventually it ceased to perturb me and became a mere feature of the journey, over which I had no control and therefore no need to care for.

One unpleasant moment occurred when we walked by a group of young men leaning on the graveyard wall, smoking, for I recognised them as some of Edwin's drinking companions. So, it seemed, did Jasper, for his grip on me tightened.

"Jasper!" one of them shouted. "For shame! Taking a fellow's bride. Damned poor show."

The others nudged him and tried to make him quieten, but he had taken his lunch in the alehouse, it seemed, and he continued to slur at our backs as we walked on.

"Pay them no mind," Jasper said to me.

"I am trying not to."

But the memory of Edwin nagged at me. Would we hear from him again? Was he now dead to us?

I must have still been frowning as we passed under the gatehouse arch, for Jasper thanked the Crisparkles and suggested that, as I was clearly tired (more laughter) perhaps we should break up the party here and leave them to their perambulations.

"Well, I am sure a rest is what is called for," said Mrs Crisparkle, though I could see from the faces of all the others that they considered this 'rest' suggestion to be mere euphemism.

"Absolutely so," said Jasper, bearing me away to the postern stair. "Plenty of rest."

I was only able to wave pathetically at Helena and entreat her to come and pay a call on me during the week before Jasper shut the door behind us.

"So," he said, chivvying me up the stairs with his fingers in the small of my back, "this music lesson."

I turned to pout at him. "Surely you do not mean to make me play the piano when I am so tired."

"You had all the sleep you needed at the cathedral, my love."

He joined me on the top step and unlocked the door, ushering me inside.

"I cannot remember what all the keys are now, it is so long since I played."

"High time your memory was refreshed then, hmm?"

He steered me towards the instrument, sitting me down on the stool while he stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders.

For all my protestations, I was charged with fluttering excitement. I found him rather thrilling when he played the strict teacher. How had I ever found it tiresome? I must have been deluding myself.

"There is nobody to sprain your wrist for you today, Rosebud," he whispered into my ear.

"Oh, stop it."

"Disgraceful behaviour, Rosebud. What do you think you deserve for it?"

"A kiss?"

He laughed.

"Well, you shall have kisses, and to spare, but first, open the lid, if you please."

I made a great show of reluctance, but I obeyed.

"Czerny's Exercise No. 1 – do you recall it from memory?"

Horribly enough, I did. I positioned my fingers on the keys. Jasper set his metronome ticking. I had the oddest urge to run away, it took me so vividly back to those terrifying times.

I was about to start when he cried, "Stop, stop! Something is amiss."

I turned around. My fingers were set too low, no doubt, or…

"You are wearing too many clothes," he explained, already unbuttoning the back of my dress.

"And is this a problem you experience with many of your pupils?"

"Just this one." He was deft as anything, and I was loose to the waist by the time he had spoken his reply. "Stand up."

It seemed to take him no time at all to pare me down to my undergarments. Once I stood, shivering a little, in chemise and drawers, I was bidden to take my seat once more.

"That exercise, then," he said. "And I shall count the mistakes."

"Why?"

"You will see. Pay attention to the fingering."

It was enormously difficult to pay attention to the fingering when his own fingering was so distracting, for as soon as I began to play he reached around in front of me and stroked at my breasts through the thin chemise.

I gasped and forgot my place immediately.

"I cannot play if you are going to―"

"You can. Start again."

Oh God, it was just like our lessons of old, but with the additional torment of his thumbs attending to my nipples, bringing them to a peak of throbbing stiffness very quickly. Mr Czerny would certainly have disapproved of this technique, for it threw my playing into immense confusion, until eventually I plunged my fingers down in a fierce discord and pleaded for mercy.

"This is terrible teaching!" I exclaimed, through my gasps.

"On the contrary, I think this the best lesson I ever taught," he said, kissing my neck. "But you made a great many mistakes. I counted eleven. So for that, Miss Rosebud…" He took hold of my upper arms, lifted me to my feet then bent me forward over the piano with my bottom jutting over the stool, on which he then knelt, untying the flap of my drawers.

Oh, I could see what was coming. I could see it very clearly indeed.

"This is monstrously unfair," I wheedled.

"Yes, my dear. I know. Such is life, when you marry your cruel music master, a man so terrible he must be avoided by means up to and including loss of limb."

"Next time I see Kitty Mason I'm going to kill her," I vowed, but I held in a breath of rapt anticipation when Jasper's hand alighted on my vulnerable rear cheeks.

He laid the first stroke, and it was not hard, but it did send a little prickling throb radiating outwards from the area of impact. I pretended to feel it much more keenly than I did, whimpering pathetically, which only made him laugh. The beast!

"I think you shall concentrate much better on your studies after today," he said, laying on two more. Warmth began to build, sending its message of need to that nexus of pleasure so closely situated, despite the fatigue engendered by my almost-sleepless night of passionate coupling. How could my body possibly be preparing for yet more of him? Did it not understand the concept of limits?

It seemed not, for as he progressed towards the eleventh, I felt myself move further and further into the close embrace of my boundless desires. If he did not throw me down somewhere and take me immediately, I would be most disappointed.

There was to be no disappointment today, however, for as soon as the eleventh had been dealt and the rush of heat spread where it would, he seated himself on the piano stool, turned me to face him and lifted me on to his lap, my legs astride him while he worked with swift precision to release his manhood from the tyranny of braces and lower garments.

Kissing me savagely, he lowered me on to it while his hands covered every part of me, wrenching the camisole down over my breasts in their process of devastation. I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung on, having to work my thighs, which already ached, quite hard in order to keep my position. But there was no possibility of slipping down or away while he held on to me.

He guided me into a rhythm I was capable of sustaining, holding me tight while I found my perfect angle and slid up and down on his rod. How easy it was to kiss and embrace one another thus; it was just like sitting in his lap, but with such exquisite additional wickedness.

I crushed my mouth against his, grasping at his hair, jerking forwards and back over and over until I grabbed two big handfuls of his shirt and wrenched at them, hiding my face in his neck while I whispered his name, my crisis upon me.

He stood up with me still attached and rested my bottom on the piano lid, all the better for him to seat the few good hard thrusts he needed to bring his release. I could scarcely believe he was treating his piano thus, but I cared very little, holding on to him, leaning back against the uncomfortable score holder while he powered into me to the last.

"Oh, your piano," I whispered, once he had lifted me off the lid. Misty vapour had gathered on the veneer, along with some drips of his own essence. Mrs Tope would not be polishing that. I would wet a cloth…but not now.

Now I would have to take that rest.


	19. Chapter 19

That freezing, bewildering January soon gave way to February and then the worst of the cold was over and I did not have to light so many fires. This was a greater comfort than it sounds, for I hated the coarse work of scrubbing the grate and laying the fire, even though Jasper could usually be prevailed upon to do it.

Truth be told, my housekeeping had not yet passed the stage of starting a task, finding it more arduous or complicated than I expected, and calling on Mrs Tope with a hangdog expression and, more often than not, a ruined apron. It was not that I found the work menial or beneath me – I was happy to care for our little domicile and try to make it pleasant. I simply had no aptitude for it. Mrs Tope was a very kind creature, fortunately, and always helped me out in my distress.

She drew the line at cooking for us, however. More than a few times, Jasper came home to the smell of burning while a thick pall of smoke hung sullenly in every room.

"I'm not sure why they call bread, cheese and kisses bachelors' fare," he commented once as I tipped another tray of blackened cutlets into the rubbish. "It seems to be my staple diet."

"You get a lot more than kisses," I pointed out. He paused in the slicing of a loaf and smiled, the hunger-induced frown chased off.

"Very much more," he agreed. The point was inarguable. He pulled me on to his lap, taking his handkerchief out and wiping smudges from my nose before kissing it. "When I have my new post," he said, "we shall engage a maid of all work. And then you may have the life I want for you, instead of having to drudge the livelong day away."

"I don't mind the work. I mind that I find it so difficult. I wish I were not such a disappointment to you."

"If you dare describe yourself in those terms to me, Rosebud, I shall be most displeased."

I sighed, although his displeasure was occasionally well worth incurring. I thought about his efforts to remove us from Cloisterham. Although he had applied for every post that was advertised, nothing had come to fruition. The Dean had no desire to go through the pain and aggravation of replacing his highly effective precentor, and so he merely mentioned the elopement every time his reference was sought. Instantly, Jasper's application was discounted. It was terribly disheartening for him, hard though he tried not to show it.

Spring blossomed in the cathedral close, bringing our first news of Edwin since the disastrous confrontation in London. He had gone to Egypt – not that he told us himself; the news came from Mrs Crisparkle, to whom he had written a brief note before embarking on his new life.

Although Jasper and I continued to be shunned by 'good society', the impact of our ostracisation was surprisingly small. I found that I was as happy to receive Helena or Edith or even Kitty Mason as any of the grandes dames of the town. They were more entertaining, anyway. Miss Twinkleton still would not unbend and allow me over the threshold of the Nuns' House, fearing the moral contagion I might spread among her charges, I suppose.

I had no such reputation at the workhouse, which I had begun visiting as a volunteer. Jasper's story of his lonely, neglected childhood had haunted me to the extent that I wondered constantly how many children might be in a similar position – friendless and unloved. Jasper had at least had a good school to go to, but there were others who had not even that. I offered myself as a mentor to some orphan children, who came for tea on a weekly basis and saw to it that they knew they could come to me with any upsets or concerns. Jasper, of all people, wondered at this, but he seemed to accept it, though he avoided the teas.

And so our life unfolded, unassuming indeed, perhaps even dull to some, but I had no complaints – saving my own domestic ineptitude.

Returning from a post-Easter visit to the Richardsons – and their small son - in London, having crammed in as many concerts and musical events as a person could humanly attend, I looked forward to more of the humdrum same.

Jasper would leave for the cathedral after breakfast and I would go down to the market and spend the morning trying to make the gatehouse habitable, with varying degrees of success, then he would come home for lunch and…sometimes more than lunch…well, quite often more than lunch…and I would usually still be half-dressed when he left to teach at the choir school for the afternoon.

I would go to the workhouse, or take a walk, or do some playing or sketching or receive my friends, or the orphans, for tea. And then I would go to meet Jasper from Evensong and we would spend the hours until morning together – oh, such happiness. Happiness that was so simple and yet so impossible to explain.

Jasper carried me up the postern stair, leaving our bags at the outer door, and dropped me triumphantly upon the bed.

"Do not move," he cautioned, leaving the room to collect the luggage.

I lay back, luxuriating in the bliss of having our own bed back again after that wretched, groaning thing of the Richardsons'. The tree outside the window was in leaf, providing a lattice of greenery beyond the leaded glass.

I heard Jasper set down the bags and I hugged myself tight, previewing a whole afternoon with nowhere to go and nobody to see.

"Have you not taken off your boots yet?" he said, raising an eyebrow as he came back in, only in shirtsleeves and barefoot.

"You told me not to move."

"Oh, and you are doing as you are told today, are you?" He came to sit on the side of the bed, unlacing my boots. "This is Mrs Jasper's day for listening to her husband. Well, I must make the most of it."

"I always listen to you," I protested.

"But there is a fine distinction between listening and paying heed," he said, removing the boots one by one.

"If you are determined to find fault with me, then there is nothing I can say in my defence."

He pulled me up by my hands until I sat facing him, our foreheads touching.

"I find no fault with you at all, unless it is that particularly charming manner of fault that affords me the pleasure of correction."

He kissed me, and then the light tone he had taken thus far darkened.

"You are entirely too perfect," he said. "I sometimes fear you cannot possibly…"

"Oh, what, love?"

He held my cheek in the palm of his hand, looking sombrely into my eyes.

"You _are_ happy, aren't you, Rosebud?"

"Oh, Jasper, can you doubt it?"

He raised his head to look around at the spartan bedroom. I tried to enliven it with vases of fresh flowers usually, but we had not been here for a week, so its aspect was a little bare.

"This place," he said. "We will find somewhere better. And there will be a garden and a maid and all that your heart desires. If only I can find a new post…"

"My darling, it does not matter. Where we live…what you do…none of that matters to me. As long as we are with one another, I have all that my heart desires."

"But for the future, Rosebud."

"Let the future take care of itself."

He smiled and stroked my cheek, but his eyes were misty.

"The future sometimes needs taking care of," he said. "I may try to save a little from my wages, Rosa. Put some money aside for the deposit on a larger dwelling. And we still have Grewgious to pay off…"

"Oh, he will not chase us. He does not expect the money back."

"It must be paid," said Jasper firmly. "I shall go to the bank on Monday. This place might suit now, while there are only two of us, but who knows when that may change?"

I clenched my fingers in his.

"_We_ know, one presumes," I said. "Since we are being careful…"

"Yes, but for how long shall we wish to be careful?"

"You are saying you want to…?"

"It is for you to decide, Rosebud. I am saying nothing, simply giving voice to the possibilities."

"The only possibilities I can contemplate just now are those afforded by this bed."

He held me against him, chuckling at my boldness, kissing my hair.

"I hope sleep is not one of those," he said.

"Indeed it is not. Come, let me unbutton your waistcoat for you."

He smiled and presented himself to me, allowing me to slip each brass button undone then ease my hands inside, brushing against the silk lining, before removing it. Hungry for him now, I moved on to his cravat and then his shirt, no longer having the trouble I used to with his cuffs. Now it was easy to lift it over his head. My fingers were eager and well-versed in this mystery. We had become experts in the simultaneous undressing of each other though on this occasion, as was rarely the case, I completed my half of the task first. Still in my drawers while he was gloriously naked, I guided him down on to his back and scrambled between his thighs, already exhilarated at the prospect of the pleasure I had in store for him.

"What do you intend?" he asked, but it was clear that he was hoping for something in particular.

Over the months, I had honed this new and unusual skill, one which I had never thought to learn, and I dropped my head down and kissed his upstanding shaft from root to tip. He threw his head back in the pillow and moaned.

Oh, such power! Customarily, he took the lead in our dance of pleasure, but sometimes I enjoyed surprising him by seizing the initiative. I had been planning this encounter all the way home.

I let the tip of my tongue glide upwards from the base of his manhood, covering and tickling all those little sensitive spots I had learned.

"Oh, you precious little tease," he sighed. "When I get my hands on you…"

I giggled, then wrapped my lips around his tip, still using my tongue to drive the shivers through him. I loved these first moments, bathing him in the sensations, feeling him quiver as the blood surged into his manhood.

Truth to tell, I usually began to tire of it after a few minutes, for his prodigious girth made my jaw ache, but I tried, as ever, to accommodate just that little bit more of him than before, wrapping my hand around his lower end and squeezing.

I wondered if I would taste him today. Sometimes he would pour himself into my mouth and I would swallow every drop, though the first time I was not sure it was safe to do so. The flavour was not exactly ambrosial, but the effect on him made it an experience worth repeating.

Today this was not to be so, however, for he grasped my head by the sides and pulled me gently off him before bringing me to lie full-length on top of his body, distracted with blizzards of kisses while he strove to introduce his length into me. Lying on him, impaled on his manhood, I was fixed in position by his arms until he made a sudden move, rolling me over on to my back so quickly that I squealed.

"You are still listening to me?" he asked, thrusting with a will.

I nodded.

"Good. Listen to me now. You will not move from this bed for the rest of the day or night. And if, by tomorrow morning, you are capable of movement, I shall consider that I have failed in my conjugal duty. I intend to keep you underneath me until the break of dawn. How do you like that?"

"You will kill me. But I cannot imagine a sweeter death."

"No, nor I, Rosebud. Nor I."

But now my household accounts became harder to balance. I was to spend less on food and fuel – the latter was not so difficult, in the mild, gentle climes of the late Spring, but I soon grew tired of trying to boil cheap cuts of meat into something palatable.

New gowns could only be of the cheaper materials – no silks or lace trims this season. My habit of buying myself every pretty thing I saw in the haberdashery window could no longer be indulged. It was hard, but I kept telling myself it would be worth it when we moved into our own house.

"What is this?" Jasper asked, frowning at a vase of cut flowers on the piano.

"Why, flowers, of course."

"They are from the florist."

"No, they are from Mrs Crisparkle's garden."

"And the vase?"

"She lent it to me. Now stop quizzing me and sit down while I set the table."

"You have cooked a chicken?"

I blushed, a little nervous. "Yes. I have."

"Rosa, we are economising. We cannot afford this."

"But we have eaten nothing but lentil soup all week. Surely we can manage a treat, once in a while?"

Jasper was so short-tempered and irritable at the moment. The slightest thing seemed to set him off on a lecture about my profligate spending habits.

"We can manage to eat, yes, but luxuries are out of the question. As you know."

"You must be saving a good deal."

"Do you heed me, Rosa?"

"Yes, yes." I pursed my lips and hid from him in the tiny kitchen. It was unfair of him to blame me for our diminishing income. The savings account had been his idea, after all.

I took the dinner from the oven and dished it up. It was the most extravagant meal I had made in weeks, and I had looked forward to it so. Yet now I did not have the stomach for it.

We dined in uncompanionable silence. I toyed with my meat, but the preceding tiff conspired with an increasingly frequent nausea to ruin my appetite. The succulent chicken struck me suddenly as unbearably greasy. I pushed the plate away and went to curl up on the bed.

Jasper came in after me, less severe now.

"Come and eat, at least, Rosebud," he said.

"Oh, I am Rosebud again. So you forgive me for wanting to feed you decent food, do you?"

He sat on the side of the bed and sighed.

"I do not mean to snap at you, my love. Another post I sought has been denied me. But that is not your fault."

"It is, in a manner of speaking. If you had never married me…"

"If I had never married you I should be a poor specimen indeed. I should have nothing of value in my life."

"We shall be all right. Shan't we?"

"Of course we shall. Now, come and eat."

"I will, in a moment. Go and finish yours – it will go cold."

I did not dare tell him that the thought of eating made me queasy. I wondered if this had any connection with the heightened sensitivity of my breasts, which made me want to slap his hand away every time he touched them of late. Surely we had been careful enough…but then, I supposed he had had to be careful with his former mistresses rather less often than we did. It would only have taken one slip, and it was true to say that we had become rather less careful as the months had passed…

Oh dear. I pressed my hands to my stomach and buried my face in the pillow, willing the thought to go away.

The thought had not gone away by the next morning. I could eat no more than a piece of gingerbread for breakfast. Jasper chided me, still put out at the waste of last night's feast, and I promised I would boil an egg when he was at the cathedral, but I did not.

Moreover, there was no sign of the habitual stomach cramp I had been expecting. There was no blood either. My mind was troubled as I walked up the Close to meet Jasper from Evensong. How could I tell him this, when we struggled so to make ends meet? Would we have to abandon our savings? But to bring a child up in that tiny lodge would be a test of patience I could hardly bear to think about.

The sun shone gloriously, but my mood was wintry and bleak. Walking around the perimeter wall of the Nuns' House, I imagined how my life would be if I had never left it. I would be preparing to finish there now. I would be planning my wedding to Edwin…or, if I had still broken the engagement, what would I be doing then? What would my future have held? It was the oddest thought – these phantasmic lives I could have led. Instead of being stuck in a gloomy gatehouse, unsuitably with child by the penniless cathedral choirmaster.

I did not even have a smile for Neville Landless as he hastened towards me, hand wrapped tight around that awful ashplant he took everywhere.

"Mr Landless," I said listlessly, but his face was feverish and he seemed to have something to tell me.

"Mrs Jasper," he said eagerly. "Your husband is keeping strange company these days."

"What do you mean?"

"Go around the side of the cathedral by the north transept and you will see."

"See what? Tell me."

"Come. I'll show you."

I followed him around the building, filled with a nameless dread. What on Earth might Neville Landless mean? What sort of 'strange company'?

We reached the side path and I stopped, frozen in anguished dismay. Standing aside from the building, half-concealed by some tombs, stood Jasper, talking to the woman I had seen outside St Paul's. The opium dealer. And, just before my husband turned away from her, he handed her a great wad of banknotes.


	20. Chapter 20

I dropped to my haunches and was promptly sick into a shrub.

Jasper was back in the cathedral, presumably waiting for me, having taken his leave of the woman. She had pocketed the money and run.

Neville Landless bent down to me and put his hand on my back.

"Mrs Jasper…are you all right?"

I wiped my mouth with my handkerchief and tried to stand up, a mite too quickly, so a little giddy rush swirled around my head. Landless took hold of my arm, holding me up, but I snatched myself beyond his reach. Nothing would please him more than to know he had opened a rift between me and Jasper. I don't know why he possessed such a violent antipathy towards my husband, but I supposed it had to do with that time he had broken up his fight with Eddy. Whatever that had been about.

"Let me walk you home," he offered, but I simply shook my head and took to my heels, pelting back towards the gatehouse, too shocked to think.

Back upstairs, I paced up and down, pulled out my suitcase, paced up and down, threw some things in the suitcase, paced up and down, hid the suitcase under the bed, paced some more. My thoughts wouldn't settle, wouldn't cohere. I sat in the chair, hand over my mouth, and rocked to and fro, then I went over to the piano and hit at the keys, stabbing them, without melody.

I was still doing this when I heard Jasper's foot on the stair. Abruptly I closed the lid and went to the window, gazing out, so I wouldn't have to face him until I was ready.

He opened the door.

"Rosebud? Oh, there you are. Where were you? I waited for you, but…"

I didn't turn around, couldn't bear to look at him.

His voice dropped low. "What is wrong?"

I took a deep breath and held on to the piano, turning to face him.

"You don't look well," he said, advancing towards me. "Have you eaten? Where is supper?"

"There is no supper," I said.

"Rosebud." He sounded so worried about me. Half of me wanted to let him hold me, and reassure me that everything would be all right and nothing was wrong. All of me wanted to believe it. "Whatever is the matter?"

"There is no supper, because we are _economising_. Aren't we?"

"If you are still sulking about that chicken―"

I picked up his metronome from the piano top and flung it at the floor. The needle snapped off.

"Rosa!" He grabbed me by the arms. "I won't have this."

"And I won't have you! Going back to opium."

His grip on my arms loosened, then he dropped them.

"What is this nonsense? I haven't touched opium since January."

"Oh, haven't you? So what were you doing with that woman? Yes." I poked him in the chest, noticing the pall of horror that had settled over his face. "I saw you, John Jasper, in the churchyard. You gave her money. Our money, for our future."

He was silent, the wind blown from his sails.

"You can't deny it. You are an opium addict once more. Oh God, how could you?"

Taken beyond my senses, I slapped his face, hard. He caught my wrist and held on to it, dragging me towards the armchair.

"Sit," he ordered, manhandling me into it.

I wanted to get up and push him away from me, but I knew I would not be able to. He stood between me and all chances of escape. I could only wait for him to answer the accusation.

"Now you will listen to me, Rosa," he seethed. "I am not, and never more will be, an opium addict."

"So―"

He held up a hand. "I asked you to listen. I wish I could have kept this sordid little secret from you, but now I have no choice but to tell you. That woman is blackmailing me."

I hardly knew what to say. Was it the truth, or was he trying to hide his descent into narcotic dependency again?

"Blackmailing you? Why?"

"Why? For money, of course."

"No, but, I mean…what is she blackmailing you with?"

"Cast your mind back to my lowest ebb. You said you would call a doctor. I asked you not to. Do you remember why?"

"Because you said you would lose your post, if it became known…oh. So she is threatening to tell the cathedral authorities?"

"Yes."

"What proof does she have?"

"How would an opium fiend from Limehouse know a cathedral choirmaster from Cloisterham?"

"That is not proof."

"Proof is not necessary, where rumour is concerned. Coupled with the fog that still hangs over me after our elopement…well. Do you see?"

I nodded, despondent. I did not know what to do with all the anger that still burned within me.

"Why could you not have told me this? Instead of lying to me."

He did not answer for a long time. He turned away from me and spoke in an odd, choked voice.

"And if you thought that you were condemned to a life of poverty, brought on by my own foolishness? I know I am unworthy of you, but for you to know it too…"

"I cannot deny that I am terribly dismayed by this. Is our future one of penury and subjection to this woman? Do you see no way out?"

"When she found out I was choirmaster here – I don't know how she found out, perhaps she asked at St Paul's when she saw me there – she saw her opportunity for a steady income."

"A steady income? For the rest of her life?"

He turned back to me, and the look on his face chilled my heart.

"And now you know what a life you have let yourself in for. I have failed you and you will want to leave, but you will not. You will not leave me."

"I have never said so. Do not look at me so. You are frightening me."

He shook his head and braced himself with both palms against the fireplace, staring bleakly into its ashy depths.

"Somehow I will make this right," he said.

"I wish you had felt you could confide in me."

We were silent for a long time. Whichever angle I viewed the problem from, it seemed insoluble.

"What if I went to speak to her?"

He turned quickly, "No, no. You must not. Do not ever go near her."

I hid my face in the wing of the chair.

"Whoever invented opium? I should like to kill them."

It was an uncomfortable, snappish, silent evening. Jasper was angry at himself and I was angry at him. I went to bed early and left him playing monstrously dramatic music on the piano.

Lying sleepless while the moonlight intruded its shafts through the ill-fitting shutters, I thought about our predicament. Did the woman really pose such a terrible threat? What if she went to the Dean? He would hardly be inclined to believe an opium-eating drab from the lowest depths of society over his own choirmaster, surely? And Jasper was off the opium – for I believed him in that. It seemed so terribly unfair.

I felt that he should call the woman's bluff. She would not carry out her threat and, even if she did, the chances were that nobody would take her seriously.

When he came to bed at last, I sat up and told him my theory.

"You may be right, but you may equally be wrong," he said.

"Listen, I really think I should talk to her. If she sees that real people, innocent people, are involved in her scheming…"

"I said no, Rosa. I will not have you within ten miles of her."

"So we starve here while she grows fat on our money?"

"I will take on more music pupils. I have most evenings free."

"And then I will never see you."

He climbed into bed, sighing.

"Needs must when the devil drives."

But I would not be driven by the devil. I turned my back on Jasper and made my plans.

_Fly back to your own Princess Puffer, my little singing bird._

That was what she had said. Princess Puffer. It was not a name, but it was the best I had. I had launched myself on to the omnibus and train without giving myself time for second thoughts, the moment Jasper had left for the cathedral that next morning.

He was going to be furious with me. But if it meant I could stop this woman from shadowing our futures forever, it would be worth it.

At Gravesend, I took the low tide boat over to the other side of the Thames and approached the east of London from there, hiring a hansom cab.

"Limehouse?" The driver scratched his head. "What's a young lady like you want round them parts then?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"Funny kind of someone," he muttered, but I had no desire to converse further and simply stared out at the desolate reed beds.

We drove through villages, strange places on the edge of the great smoky monster that was visible beyond, then the buildings grew closer together and we passed huge dockyards with giant cranes looming over us as if they would fall and crush the surrounding buildings. Everything became very much darker and the streets were crowded, teeming with people at doorways and on corners, running in front of us and behind us. The houses were old and poor, ramshackle at best.

He stopped by some steps that led to a small jetty in the river.

"Well," he said. "Limehouse. Look, I'll walk with you. I don't like to let you into these streets alone. You'll attract the wrong kind of attention, clean little thing like you."

"You're very kind, but―"

"But me no buts. Now, who are you looking for? I'll ask in that there public house, though it'll be mostly sailors, so they likely won't know."

"I don't know her real name, but she seems to call herself Princess Puffer."

"Princess Puffer? Rum, and no mistake. All right. Wait out here and I'll enquire within."

I stood outside the public house, trying to make myself as invisible as possible. A Chinese-looking man stopped to stare at me as he passed, but he made no comment. Then I saw a group of sailors, drunk at eleven o'clock in the morning, stagger arm in arm along the quayside. Mercifully, the cabman came out of the building before they reached me and took my arm.

"The landlord knows her," he said. "Now, look here, young lady. I ain't sure I ought to be taking you to see her."

"I know what she does. I know she runs an opium den."

"Blimey," he said, stepping back and taking me in from head to foot. "You're a funny one, and no mistake. Why the blue blazes would a sweet thing like you be visiting an opium den?"

"Not to buy opium, if that's what you think. She's an acquaintance of my husband's. I have urgent words to say to her."

"Well," he shrugged. "It's queer, but I suppose you know what you're doing."

He stopped in front of a tumbledown little building of rotting lath and plaster.

"This is the place," he said. "Upstairs on the right. I'll wait outside for you, if you don't mean to be long."

"I don't know how long I'll be." Already my stomach was jittering with alarm at the prospect of entering this place. But I was here now.

"I'll come back in an hour," he said. "If you ain't waiting for me, I'll give you up as a lost cause. Now take care of yourself in there, won't you?"

"I promise."

"Don't know what your husband's thinking of, I'm sure," he muttered, turning on his heel.

"Neither do I," I whispered. Soon he would come back for lunch and find me absent. Would he guess where I was?

I entered by an alley and took a creaking stair up to the first floor. The building was dark and reeked of a heavy, pungent smoke, unlike anything I had smelled before. It mixed in with the damp and the river stink and the aroma of smoked fish to make a combination I could barely stomach. I had to put my handkerchief to my nose before I could reach the top step. How could Jasper have come here, time after time, seeking pleasure? What pleasure could possibly exist in this place?

The door was not locked, not even shut. I pushed it ajar and entered a dark little room, full of bunks, with some tired old rags nailed to the window.

In the half-light, I could see nobody at first, then I observed the outline of a body on one of the bunks, surrounded by pipes and spoons and such paraphernalia.

Princess Puffer. Her mouth was wide open and she was snoring.

I picked up the largest pipe, examining it while I tried to decide what to do. It might be unwise to wake her. What if she was deep in some opium dream? Maybe Jasper himself had smoked this pipe. The thought was enough to make me drop it with a clatter on to its copper tray.

"Who's there?" she muttered, her eyelids fluttering. I had heard people described as 'raddled' before but now, looking at her, I understood the meaning of the word.

Slowly, she came to, blinking rapidly at me, then sitting up all at once.

"What 'ave we 'ere?" she said, smothering a yawn. "New customer? Don't get many young ladies up 'ere. Not specially those of the quality."

I said nothing, but simply glared at her.

"Well, what is it I can do for you, dearie?"

"I see you do not know me," I said. "But you know my husband."

"Do I? Oh!" She squinted at me, sitting up and leaning forward. "I'd put a pound to a penny you're 'is little Rosebud. Aren't you?"

"I am John Jasper's wife."

"Well, well." She sat back, smiling a maddening little smile, as if she were absolutely delighted to make my acquaintance. "He really loves you, Rosa Bud. He really does. A little bit too much, I'd say. But I can see why. Pretty little thing, you are. And so young. Must say, I was surprised when I found out he'd got his hands on you, after all. I'm sorry I can't offer much in the way of hospitality…"

"I don't want anything."

"Does he know you're here?"

"No."

"So why are you here then?"

"I want you to stop asking him for money. He can't afford it. He barely earns enough to keep us both."

She was quiet for a while, fidgeting with the smoking paraphernalia.

"Do I look like I'm made of money, dear? I have to make my living somehow. Times is hard, for all of us."

"I'm not so foolish as to appeal to your higher principles or your mercy. But I may have a way of finding the money elsewhere, if you'll bear with me while I consult with my lawyer."

"Fancy. Your lawyer?"

"Yes. And, as blackmail is against the law, he may have a few ideas on that score."

"Oh." She sat forward and I had to take a step or two back at the suddenness of it. "Now you're threatening me, are you?"

I swallowed hard.

"I will do what I have to to protect my family."

"I'd like to hear what your lawyer has to say about Mr Jasper's little secret."

"Opium smoking is not against the law, though it might be frowned upon in cathedral circles. I don't see why the Dean would take your word for it, anyway. Mr Jasper is no longer addicted to opium and lives quietly and respectably. Why can you not leave him alone?"

She laughed at that, a lengthy cackle, and laid herself back against her dirty cushions.

"I'm blackmailing him about his opium smoking, am I? Is that what he told you?"

My blood ran cold. That inescapable nausea rose to the top of my throat again.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't think he would have told you. He said he'd die before he let you find out."

I had to sit down at the foot of her raggedy old cot and catch my breath.

"Find out what?"

"Now, if I tell you that, dearie, how am I going to get into his pocketbook again?"

"So it's _me_? You're threatening him with something you could tell me?"

"That's right."

I twisted over the end of the bed and was sick into the old chamberpot I found there.

"Oh, my dear," she said, a little more gently. "The air round here is a bit rich. Takes some getting used to."

I put my hand to my stomach and bent over, head between knees, gasping for breath.

"Or is it that?" she said suddenly. "It's not just the air, is it? Sweet Rosebud's got a bun in the oven. My little singing bird _has_ been busy."

"My child will know nothing but poverty and misery," I whispered.

"Now, don't take on, dear. He never mentioned you was expecting."

"He doesn't know."

She sighed.

"Oh lor'. That puts a different complexion on things, I suppose. I don't want to be taking the bread out of an infant's mouth."

I looked up. "You mean…?"

"I mean, I don't want history repeating itself, not if it's down to me. But I can't tell you more about that. Not just yet."

"Will you stop blackmailing him?"

She shook her head.

"No point now, is there? You know there's something he ain't telling you. The cat's half out of the bag. Besides, if you're having his child, I think you should know it anyway. Then you can decide."

"Decide?"

"You might not want to stay with him, little Rosebud. Not when you hear what I've got to say. And then, if he loses you," she continued, almost to herself in parentheses, "he'll come flying back to me and my pipe. So I won't have lost out, after all."

"Please tell me what you know. I cannot rest until you do."

"Your husband's a dreamer of dreams, Rosebud, do you know that? And all of them were about you. But you belonged to another, back then."

"I know. Edwin. But I broke it off."

"Lucky for him."

"Do you think so?"

"He owes you his life."

"What? How so?"

"Your Mr Jasper had the most vivid dreams. When he was under the influence, he would witter away. At first it didn't make no sense, but he had the same dream, over and over, and soon I began to piece the little bits of nonsense together, and I started to understand what it was he saw in there, in the darkest depths of him."

"You are blackmailing him about a dream? What was it?"

"He would kill Edwin and then he could have you. The murder plan was simple. He would strangle him with his scarf – the scarf he always wore here, that he used to cling on to all through the night. Hide the body, in the cathedral crypt. See, that's how I knew he worked or lived near a cathedral. And then, you could be his."

"You…you seriously think…this is surely an opium dream? A fantasy? A violent one, perhaps…but the balance of his mind was deranged, while he was taking that stuff. I cannot…it is hard to understand…"

I wanted to diminish it, to make it nothing.

But it was a shocking thing to hear, all the same, and I turned my face away to hide the tears that prickled at my eyes.

"Maybe it was all a dream, dearie," she whispered. "But then this fell out of his pocket one night…the last time he came to me…"

She reached into her drawer and brought out a book, an unremarkable leatherbound diary. When I opened it, it was full of Jasper's close, tight handwriting.

"What is this?"

"He kept this book – you could call it a diary, but it isn't, really. It's what he was going to hand over to the police after he killed your Edwin."

I rifled through it, trying to make my eyes settle on a sentence and read, but I simply couldn't concentrate. What the woman was saying was preposterous. What could it possibly mean?

"It's his own little story. He was going to kill his rival and then frame this young man he keeps mentioning – Neville Landless. He was going to murder Edwin, let Landless hang and then he could have you for his own."

"Oh, this is _nonsense_."

"Read it. It's all in his own hand. You know his hand, I suppose?"

"Of course."

There was a knock at the door.

"I've got a customer. You'd best be off. But it was nice to meet you, Rosebud. Give my regards to the choirmaster."

I could scarcely leave at a fast enough pace. Clutching the book, I made my way down the stairs.

The cabman stood in waiting, to my immense relief.

"Where to now?" he asked.

"The Inns of Court, if you please."


	21. Chapter 21

The door was opened by Mr Bazzard, whose eyes stretched wide before he bowed low, ushering me in.

"I'm afraid Mr Grewgious is otherwise engaged on legal business," he said. "But I am sure he would not object to my admitting you."

He watched me sit down and then stood for a moment, raking me over with his eyes until I felt like an exhibit.

"When do you expect him back?" I asked, put out.

"Imminently, I am sure. I suppose you will be wanting some form of refreshment?" The offer was made without enthusiasm.

"No, no, just…do you have such a thing as a bucket? Or a basin?" I looked around me wildly for such a thing, finding only shelf upon shelf of law books.

"A bucket?" Bazzard was nonplussed, but all became clear when I leapt from the chair, but I was too late, for I fell to my knees and retched all over the rug.

"Oh dear," I gasped, still on my hands and knees. "I am so sorry."

Truth to tell, there was not much to be cleared up, for I had not eaten since breakfast and most of that lay in Princess Puffer's chamberpot.

Bazzard simply stood staring at the rug with horrified dismay.

Grewgious chose that inopportune moment to make his entrance.

"Good heavens. Whatever is amiss? Rosa?"

"I'm afraid I have made a mess of your rug."

"Dear girl, you are not well." He hurried over, dropping his case on a table before helping me back into the chair. "Well, Bazzard? Do you have many flies to catch today? Fetch a mop and bucket, for heaven's sake."

"And now it has come to this," he muttered dramatically. "If you are in need of somebody to mop up the contents of somebody's stomach, call on Daniel Bazzard."

He stormed off, leaving Grewgious and I together.

"Rosa," he said gently.

I did not know how to open the conversation. I had thought about it in the cab, when I was not flipping through that strange book of Jasper's. I could draw no conclusions from it. It seemed, in most respects, a perfectly ordinary type of journal, detailing the movements of himself and Edwin up to Christmas. It was true to say that he rather overstated the seriousness of Eddy and Neville's fight, but whether this was from genuine concern or as part of some larger plot I could not determine.

Princess Puffer had said he intended to hand it to the police – it was all intended as evidence to frame Landless. But nothing in it was false, as far as I could make out. He did, however, seem to exaggerate his attachment to Eddy, whom I now knew he had barely even liked, which was one thing that pointed towards the harridan's theory.

He had started the diary the day after we met, which gave me pause. Did he start fantasising Edwin's murder from that point? But the early entries were bland and dull in the extreme, except the little reminders every Monday and Thursday: "1 p.m. R" – which made my stomach twist in reminiscence. Scattered about the margins were little bars of music here and there, occasionally crossing into the main body of the diary, presumably when he was feeling inspired. One of them had a title: Rosebuds.

But had murder been on his mind, truly? Could he have put his dream into practice? Anyone in the world could dream of murdering a person – few could actually do it.

And now I was here with Grewgious, I did not know what to say. I had no idea how I wanted to proceed.

"I need a little breathing space," I managed to say.

Bazzard came in and pushed the mop listlessly around the rug until Grewgious, uncharacteristically irritable, sent him out to make tea.

"There is trouble between you and Jasper?"

"There is…I cannot explain it, Mr Grewgious, but I only ask your forebearance and wonder if you would be so kind as to give me a bed for the night."

"For as many nights as you wish. And you know that my earlier offer is still open. If you wish to make a formal separation from Mr Jasper―"

"I do not wish to make any such decision. I have just learned some…startling information…and I need peace and solitude to try and understand it. And, as you are the closest I have to a living parent, I came to you."

"You did well, Rosa. My door is always open to you. Might I enquire what the nature of this startling information might be?"

"I am so sorry, Mr Grewgious, for I know your intentions are the best, but I do not think I should discuss it with anyone except my husband. At least, I should discuss it with him first."

"Very well," he said. "There is a bed made up in my guest chamber upstairs. Let us take tea and then I will show you to it."

"Thank you."

We talked of other things, inconsequential things, while we drank our tea, though my mind felt far from capable of concentration.

I spent the rest of the day – except supper – in that guest chamber, looking over and over the diary, reliving every word Princess Puffer had spoken, trying to imagine an alternative reality in which I had not broken with Edwin and Jasper had…what? Would he have killed him? Would he have stood by and watched Neville Landless hang, for the sake of possessing me? It was too outlandish. And yet when I thought of Jasper, of his vehemence and intensity, I shivered a little and thought perhaps…

I went to bed early, fatally sapped by the rigours of the day, combined with a kind of bone-deep weariness that seemed linked to the nausea, and managed to find some sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, my path seemed clear. I would go back to Cloisterham, and Jasper and I would talk, a once-and-for-all kind of talk that made it clear that I expected no further obfuscation or concealment of the truth, regardless of what it related to, and then I would know what to do.

I would have to tell him about the child as well.

I breakfasted with Grewgious – or rather, Grewgious breakfasted while I held my head over a basin – and then he departed, with profuse apologies, for the courts.

Bazzard was expected within the hour. I relished the peace, managing a triangle of bread and a few sips of weak tea before there was a tremendous banging at the door. It was still a little early for clients, and Bazzard presumably had a key.

Oh. I knew who it was.

I went to the door and asked, "Who is there?" but the wood was thick and I don't think he heard me.

So I opened it. Jasper, who stood on the other side, darted out a hand with lightning speed, taking hold of my wrist and pulling me out of the door.

"You will not leave me," he said, in the fiercely intent way he had when he spoke of the blackmail, as if he were making some kind of spell or invocation.

"I needed some time," I said. "I needed to think."

"Think as much as you like, you are coming home with me."

"I mean to."

He looked astonished, frowning. "You do?"

"Yes. Let me collect my things and we will talk. Bazzard will be here soon."

I let him into the office while I packed my little carpet bag upstairs. The notebook too.

"Where can we go that is pleasant?" I wondered aloud, trying my level best to keep things light and unthreatening. I wanted to be somewhere public when I asked him about the notebook and the opium dreams. "Where we can discuss things in peace?"

"And what do we need to discuss? That you are my wife and you belong with me. I see little room for ambiguity."

"I went to see Princess Puffer."

He paled and gripped the back of a chair.

"I told you not to," he said hoarsely after a most horrible silence.

"That's why I went to see her," I retorted. "Do you not know me at all?"

"So you went to see her? But you still intend to come home with me?"

"I think I do. But first, we must talk. Let us go somewhere…"

"The Whispering Gallery," he said. "You wanted to see it."

"Yes, I did."

He held out his hand.

For a moment, I thought better of taking it. The hand that might have killed my Eddy.

But it hadn't. It hadn't killed anyone.

I took it, and we left in the direction of St Paul's.

"I was worried sick about you," he said, weaving with me through the lawyers and clients, the sellers and buyers on the streets. "Anything could have happened to you."

"I was safe and well."

"You went to _Limehouse_." He shouted the words, stopping and pressing tight into my arm.

"I had to."

"I cannot…God, Rosa. When I think of what could have happened…"

"Murder, perhaps? You know about that, don't you?"

He looked so haunted that I regretted my throwaway words. I had not meant to bring the subject up so cavalierly. But his scolding had made me bristle, as it always did. I had done nothing wrong!

We walked on in silence until we reached St Paul's. He led me up the many, many stairs until we arrived on the Whispering Gallery. Immediately, I regretted the choice of venue. It was so very high up. It was not the place for such a charged conversation as ours was bound to be. All the same, I clung to the handrail and tried to look up instead of down.

"Princess Puffer told you all, did she?" he opened softly.

"She told me about your dreams."

"Yes, I had dreams. Opium will induce them."

"Does it choose them for you? Or do you choose them?"

"It was a fantasy, which the opium elaborated and made richer. The day I met you, I lay in bed that night and thought about what might happen if Edwin died. When I went to Limehouse the following weekend, that thought exploded into this dream. Such a pleasurable dream it was, too."

"You took pleasure in dreams of murder?"

"You cannot understand unless you have known the perfect beauty of the opium dream. It repeated itself, over and over, until I came to think of it as a prophecy. A prompt. A direction from a higher power."

"A delusion."

"Yes. A delusion. But you must realise, Rosa, that by then, I was hopelessly in the grip of my dependency, and I could not think as I do now. The opium drove the obsession and the obsession fed on the opium until they became parasitically related."

"And if I had not broken up with Eddy?"

I could not look at him. The great dome arced above us, heavenly and golden, perhaps like Jasper's opium dreams.

"Would I have killed him?"

The question whispered through the empty gallery. I waited and waited for his answer, fixing my gaze on one gilded embellishment until it blurred before my eyes.

"I don't know."

"Oh, dear Lord. What am I to do?"

"I don't know, Rosa, because I no longer understand or even recognise the man I was at that time. Whatever he might have done, he was not entirely me. He was the dark part, unrestrained, unrestricted by the rest of me, the person you see now. The person you married."

"You cannot abdicate responsibility so completely. You were still John Jasper. You were not so different."

"Outwardly, perhaps not. But inwardly, I was in fragments. Pieces of me…went missing. Parts of my mind, burnt away by opium."

"So perhaps you would have done it?"

I looked at him, desperate for him to deny it completely.

He shook his head. He would not deny it, though he could have lied to me. It would have been so easy for him to have lied to me.

"I think it is unlikely, when I look at the facts of the case," he said.

"That diary…"

"Oh, it was simple idiocy. Just a token of the fantasy I was living. All my life, Rosa, I have written down murder plots and stories, pieces of fiction. They drained some of the poison from my mind. You have no idea how many people I have murdered in fiction. My sister, Captain Drood, half the boys from the choir school."

"But you have never really murdered anyone?"

He laughed, but it wasn't really a laugh, more a kind of hacking sob.

"God knows I've had the provocation. But no."

I looked down, all the way down, weighing his words.

Two options lay open to me.

I could leave him, for he had behaved most dangerously in the past, taking opium and plotting murders and becoming unhealthily fixated on me to a point that could well have ended in disaster for all concerned, including me. To think back on all of that, now I knew it in entirety, was certainly chilling and good grounds to turn my back on him.

Or I could be brave. I could look at the man I was married to and accept that time of turbulence as some kind of terrible episode of illness or mania, induced by opium. He knew well enough how far beyond the pale he had gone and his remorse was genuine. He wanted nothing else than to live an unassuming life as my husband and the father of my children. And this was all I wanted as well. Should I give it all up for the sake of something that was past and gone with nobody the worse for it?

"Why did you not tell me any of this?" I asked heavily.

"I wanted to shield you."

"From the kind of man you are? The kind of man I have committed my life to?"

"I did not want you to fear."

"You have made me fear far worse. You should have told me."

"You would have left me."

"I deserve to be able to make an informed choice."

"I could not have you make that choice. I could not. I wanted you to think…oh, it is useless."

"To think you were perfect and everything was wonderful?"

"Yes. I wanted you to think that. That is what you deserve to think. It seemed selfish for me to take that happiness from you. And we were happy, weren't we? So very happy. For a time. I had simply hoped it could all be forgotten…but my transgression hangs over me like an axe, eternally, never to be expiated."

"Oh, Jasper. You are always so dramatic." I turned to him. "I have told you I am coming home. That is what I intend to do."

His knuckles whitened on the handrail.

"You cannot mean it."

"I do mean it. But I have a condition."

"Name it."

"You keep nothing from me in the future. Nothing at all. Even if it seems completely trivial, you must tell me. And especially if you think it is something I won't want to hear. If you think it will pain or upset me, then that is what I want to hear the most."

His facial muscles twitched, the hint of a smile.

"You have made the right decision," he said. "I will make you the happiest woman alive."

"You already have done. If you could do it more consistently…I would consider it an improvement."

"You forgive me?"

"Yes. And I don't believe you could ever have committed a cold-blooded murder. You are the least cold-blooded creature I have ever met in my life."

The twitch of muscles became a smile, sheepish enough, but wonderful to see.

"Whatever is in your past, John Jasper, you are in my future, and I am in yours."

"Then we can put this, all of this, behind us? No recriminations? Just a clear path into the future?"

"It is all I have wanted, ever since Christmas Day. But if I am to have faith in you, you must be worthy of it. One more concealment of the truth will be fatal to my trust. You do see, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. I see it now."

"You must."

"I do."

"And now, can we go home?"

"I want to pay a visit to somebody first."

"Oh, who?"

"You go back to Grewgious' chambers…"

"No. You have to tell me. I will come with you."

"It is Princess Puffer."

"Oh, John, what do you intend? Leave her be. She has done her worst and now we can forget about her."

"I need to ask her something, then I can let it rest."

"You are not going to threaten her, are you?"

"No. But she has made a number of oblique references to knowing something about me. I should like to know what she means."

"Oh! When I visited her, she said something strange…about not wanting history to repeat itself. I don't know what she meant by it."

"Then shall we ask her?"

"I suppose so. I do not like her room very much."

We were by now on the way down the stairs, comfortably hand in hand once more.

"Opium confers glamour to the drabbest of surroundings, but even so, I never found her den especially congenial," admitted Jasper.

"I wonder what she meant."

We hailed a cab outside the cathedral to take us back to Limehouse. Jasper held my hands tight all the way, and he did not take his eyes from me, as if he were afraid I might vanish into the ether.

"She said she would not blackmail you any more," I said.

"She has nothing to threaten me with now."

"What about telling the Dean? About the opium?"

"She never threatened me with that. I half-hoped she would tell him, then perhaps he would give me a reference simply to be rid of me." He sighed, then squeezed my fingers. "But I have no grounds to be gloomy today. Fortune favours me, at last, for I still have you, and you may be sure I shall never risk losing you again."

"I don't want to be lost. And I would be so lost without you."

"You must have said something to affect her, for her to yield my secret. How did you persuade her?"

But the cab had arrived on the dingy quayside and I was saved the eventuality of answering.

I was substantially less nervous with Jasper by my side, though I wondered whether she would have company of the inert, opium-dazed kind.

He pushed open the rickety door. The light was every bit as poor as it had been the day before, but she was at least awake, and burning some material in the bowl part of one of her pipes.

She looked up at the creak of the door, squinting into the gloom.

"Who is there?"

Jasper stepped forward, with me on his arm.

"Well, well," she said. "The happy couple. And she's still your Rosebud, is she, after everything? You want to hang on to her, dearie."

"I intend to. Is what she says true?"

"About what?"

"Our arrangement. It is at an end."

"Listen to me. I know what you think of me. I was a means to your end. I gave you the oblivion, you gave me the tin. But there's more to Princess Puffer than that. I'm a creature of flesh and blood, just like you."

"I don't doubt it." He sounded confused. "But I have come here for more than your assurance that you will not demand any more money from me. You have mentioned several times some knowledge to which I am not party. I want that knowledge."

"Sit down, both of you. I think I've some nuts somewhere, if either of you―"

"No, thank you," we both said, taking our seats on the cot beneath the window.

"Isn't it funny how things turn out sometimes?" she said, looking at us both, beaming as if she were proud of us.

"Excessively," said Jasper dryly.

"You see, little singing bird, when I saw you and your Rosebud by St Paul's, I decided I would track you down. I had my little scheme in mind, my little pension plan, if you like. And with your singing and your dreams about the cathedral, I thought you might be in a choir. Well, St Paul's, I thought. I'll enquire. I went in and saw the verger. 'That gentleman who just left here, the dark gentleman. He sings in your choir, don't he?' The verger looks down his nose at me. 'No,' he says. 'But he's a chorister, though, I'm sure of it, for I've heard him sing. I can't remember what church it might have been at, though. You're sure he's never been in your choir?' 'Oh no,' says he, 'never here. But he is choirmaster at Cloisterham. Perhaps you have heard him there.' 'Well, well,' thinks I. 'There's a class of smoker we don't get so much round here. A choirmaster.' And my scheme looks better and better."

"Yes, yes," said Jasper testily. "The Metropolitan police could employ your talents, I'm sure. But what of it?"

"Well, I'd never been to Cloisterham, but I knew a good friend who went there years ago, and I thought perhaps I could look her up. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. One a singing bird and one a fancy little peacock, what I lost touch with years ago." She laughed at her own colourful metaphor, but neither Jasper nor I joined in.

"So there I am in Cloisterham, and what a queer little place it is too. I walks to the cathedral and I asks a gentleman in a dog collar, 'Please, what's the name of your choirmaster here?' 'It's Jasper,' he says, and that strikes me speechless."

"Why?" Jasper swallowed.

"Because blow me down if that ain't the name of my old friend."

"What?"

"Jasper. Meg Jasper. Or Mrs Margaret Drood, as her very good fortune made her."

"You lie."

"Why would I lie, my dear? We was tight, me and Meg, all those years ago. She had her airs and graces but she was such a pretty thing, and so was I, though you won't believe it. Oh, we had all the swells after us." She chuckled. "But she believed their promises where I never did, the silly girl. She let them sweet-talk her into places good girls should never go. You know what I mean, Rosebud, don't you?"

I tightened my lips.

"Well, perhaps you can guess what happened. The poor girl fell. She had a child and gave it up to a baby farmer – I think the father paid, whoever he was."

She paused to give Jasper a significant look. I held on to his arm and laid my head against my arm. Oh, my love, my poor boy.

"It was me," he whispered.

"You do have a look of her, though it passed me by till I knew your name."

"She said she was my sister."

"Oh, so you saw her again? I lost touch with her, once Captain Drood came calling and bore her off to Cloisterham. She wasn't going to tell him about you, you know. But I think she got drunk one night before the wedding and it all came out. Her little secret. Lucky, she was, that he kept faith with her. He must have loved her very much."

"More than she ever loved anyone. Except Ned, of course."

"So there you are. My little revelation. Your poor mother couldn't keep you – I believe she died some years ago, God rest her – but your Rosebud ain't going the same way. No baby farms for your little one, eh?"

"Indeed…not," he said, turning to frown at me in bewilderment.

"Oh lor', she ain't told you. Well, I'd best let you be. Goodbye, my dears. And mind you tend your mother's grave a bit better. Nobody had put flowers there for years, I reckon, before I did."

Jasper rose, helping me to my feet. We left without another word.

Outside, on the fish-stinking quay, I put my hand over my mouth, trying to quell another urge to retch.

Jasper patted my arm.

"Morning sickness, my love?"

I nodded guiltily.

"I should have told you before…"

"So it isn't just me who keeps things to himself, is it?"

"I had hoped for pleasanter surroundings and a more appropriate time. Oh dear. You think it a bad circumstance. I know we have little money and the gatehouse is small and―"

He shushed me, taking me into an embrace that blocked out the insalubrious sounds and smells of Limehouse Quay.

"I think it the best news in the world, Rosebud. The very best. Now, where is a hansom cab in this godforsaken place. I am taking you home."

**A/N: I think this might actually be The End. Phew. There is nothing else standing in their way and they can live their lives without fear. But I don't think it's completely the end, because I have an Epilogue in me. I do love an Epilogue.**


	22. Chapter 22

"You must wish sometimes that you could have had a wedding of that kind."

Jasper and I, having thrown our handfuls of rice over Reverend Crisparkle and Helena, watched them ascend the carriage from the driveway of the Nuns' House, bound for a honeymoon in the exotic climes of Herne Bay.

"A white gown and a five course breakfast? If I'd married Eddy, there would have been lavish celebrations and no expense spared. Such things are all very well, but compared with the importance of marrying the right man, they pale into insignificance."

He took my arm, smiling down at me.

"Well, we have dispatched the Crisparkles and now we have an hour to spare before Mrs Tope returns Jack to us. How should we spend that time?"

"Surely we should spend it in the gatehouse – since it will be our last chance. Shall we bid it a fond farewell?"

Jasper had started hastening down the driveway before I finished my sentence. I could see from the corner of my eye that Miss Twinkleton, who had thawed somewhat since Jack's birth, wanted us to come inside and take some tea with Mrs Crisparkle, Neville Landless and the other milling guests, but we were away before she could hail us.

I was laughing in anticipation as we almost ran along the pathway towards the town, dodging strollers who were out making the most of the glorious summer sunshine.

"Jasper, you will wear me out," I exclaimed.

"As is my intention," he said. "Goodbye, ludicrously low-set doorway," he declaimed, arriving at the lodge and opening the door.

I giggled, remembering the concussion he had got a few months back from forgetting how low it truly was.

"Goodbye, postern stair." He shoved me in front of him and prodded me up the steps so that I squealed and tripped all the way.

"And goodbye, dreary, dark little gatehouse." He opened the door and I felt a sudden rush of emotion at the thought of leaving this place.

"We have had so many happy times here, all the same," I said, looking around at the familiar things – the wing chair, the piano, the great stone fireplace.

He stood behind me, curling an arm around me so that his hand rested on my stomach.

"Then let us take one more happy memory from it, as a gesture of parting," he murmured into my ear. He kissed my neck and I wanted to purr.

"We have a good many memories of that kind," I said, reliving a few as my eyes darted around the room. In the chair on his lap, in front of the fire on a rug, bent over the piano stool…

"Yes," he said, one of his hands already at work on my buttons. "But can one ever have enough?"

He divested me of gown and petticoats, without the roughness he sometimes brought to this operation, for they were my finest and I should not care to have them ruined. Instead, his fingers glided like the silk they sought to rid me of, letting the material shush down by itself rather than wrenching it. The ribbons of my corset followed and then, when I stood only in my undergarments, he turned me around to face him and kissed me until I could barely stand.

Still conjoined at the lips, he bent to lift me, carefully, until my thighs straddled his hips and I clung on to him around his neck, and walked with me to the piano. That piano had been the scene of many a frustration, for Jasper had insisted on continuing my lessons on the instrument, which I knew well I would never play better than indifferently. I believe he simply enjoyed the process of teaching me, for it was perhaps the sole area of our lives together in which I always followed his instruction. Well, at the piano and in the bedchamber, to be strictly accurate.

But there were other, far more glowing, memories of this piano, for its lid was just the perfect height for us to…ah, and this was his intention for us now. He sat me on that polished ledge, but any danger of slipping off was prevented by the solid weight of him, hard against me, while his hands worked at opening the buttons of my camisole so that my breasts were accessible to him.

His lips moved down to my neck, then my collarbone, then even lower, in a fever of kissing. When he reached his final destination, my hard, tight nipples, his curls tickled my throat and I wriggled and kicked, but he held on to me, knowing I had no means of escape, and sucked at them all the harder until I moaned.

Meanwhile, he tugged at the drawstring around my waist until it loosened and he was able to pull off my drawers, nudging my bottom up with his hands so he could remove them completely.

Now I sat naked, having kicked off my shoes, while he, fully clothed, pressed me to the piano. I thought I knew what would come next, and I prepared myself for the impalement that would surely follow, but he surprised me by dropping down a little, into a crouch, and putting his mouth between my thighs.

I inhaled and kept the breath high in my lungs, forgetting all about it in order to concentrate on the ravishing sensations wrought by his tongue. I held tight to his shoulders, my thighs trembling while he licked and kissed my most intimate parts until they swirled into liquid sensation.

Vaguely I wondered, as I sometimes did, if Eddy would have been like this. Somehow I doubted it. It seemed impossible.

Just as I was sure I was on the verge of losing myself in bliss, he took his mouth away and set to with the unbuttoning of the braces, positioning a hand beneath my thighs to lift my bottom to the perfect angle before driving himself in in one smooth stroke.

The breath fled my lungs and I clung to him, feeling myself his once more, so burstingly full of him. It was a consciousness I never tired of and he knew it. Controlling himself with an effort, he made every thrust count, pinning me to the piano, working himself into an angle that would cross the little spot inside me that always awoke such astonishing raptures.

He sheathed himself to the hilt with each stroke, and soon I came close to my peak, having been already so well prepared by his tongue. He always knew when this was about to pass and today was no exception. He held himself back just a fraction and whispered, "Say that you are mine," into my ear.

The pleasure overtook me and I obeyed. "I am yours." The words floated free on the wave of my undoing, filling the air around us, crossing the shafts of sunlight in which motes of dust hung.

They had their desired effect on Jasper, who unleashed a harder and faster series of thrusts, knocking the piano back and forth so that the strings jangled and I quite feared for it. And then he spent, holding me tight, breathing out the word "Mine" until his crisis passed and he laid his head on my shoulder, gasping for breath.

"I fear the new choirmaster will need to retune that piano," I suggested timidly as he lifted me down.

He smiled rakishly, though his chest still heaved.

"I wish him joy of it," he said. "Though probably not as much joy as it has given us. Come, you can barely stand." The smile grew broader and wickeder. He always so enjoyed the evidence of his effect on me.

He lifted me into his arms and took me into the bedroom.

"We should not disarrange the bed," I said. "We must leave so soon, and Mrs Tope will not want to make it up again."

"Oh, don't fret, Rosebud. Mrs Tope can straighten out a blanket and plump up a pillow. It will take her mere seconds." He dropped me on the meticulously neat covers. I had spent a long time making them perfect for the new man, but I supposed Jasper was right. It would be the work of seconds to right the bed.

He took off his boots and lay down beside me.

"No more shall we lie in this bed and hear the Cloisterham bells ring out," I said.

"I never did, Rosa. I was always at the cathedral. And I daresay the Winchester bells will not be so very different."

"What is the house like?"

"I have already described it to you fifty times."

"Tell me again."

"It is a cottage in the close, at the end of a row of similar cottages. It is half-timbered with a small back garden, a kitchen, a drawing room, another sitting room, a larder and store-room and two bedrooms upstairs."

"Good-sized bedrooms," I reminded him.

"Yes, good-sized bedrooms. And the previous incumbent raised five children there, so there is space enough, if we wish brothers and sisters for Jack."

"Which we do."

"Which we apparently do."

"Oh, but don't you?"

He wound one of my curls around his finger and tweaked it.

"Yes. But first we can settle into our new home. There is no hurry."

The cry of a baby from the lane outside caused me to sit bolt upright.

"Oh, it is Jack. Mrs Tope is here already. Has it really been an hour?"

I looked down at my naked body in dismay. My clothes all lay by the piano in the other room. Jasper, however, lacked only his trousers, so he fled the bedchamber, threw my clothes in to me and took desperate steps to right himself before the knock at the door came.

I listened to him tut and swear to himself, then there was the knock and he opened the door.

"Ah, Mrs Tope." He was a little breathless. "And here is my boy."

Jack made a gurgling sound, pleased to see his papa, as he was always.

"You're all set, are you, Mr Jasper?" asked Mrs Tope.

"I think so. Has Jack been well?"

"A little angel. He has such a look of you, doesn't he? We didn't know if he'd be fair like his mother or dark like you, but it's definitely you he favours."

Struggling to button my camisole over my breasts, which were so much fuller than they used to be, I smiled. I had rather feared he might look like Edwin, especially now that we knew he and Jasper had a much closer blood relationship than we had thought. Not that it would have changed the love I bore him, of course. But all the same, it had been a relief to see the fine dark curls on his brow.

"I think the little fellow's hungry," said Jasper as Jack released a cry. "Let me take him to his mama."

"Well, I'd best be off, I suppose," said Mrs Tope grudgingly.

"Thank you," said Jasper, clearly on his way out of her range. "Thank you for all your help, over the years. Rosa and I are both grateful. Rosa hopes to stay in touch, you know."

"Oh, lovely, perhaps you'll come and visit."

"Yes, perhaps. Well. Goodbye then." Jack was now bawling lustily.

The door shut and Jasper entered the room, rocking the baby and singing to him, not a sweet lullaby but some anthem by one of his beloved medieval composers. Jack would grow up knowing every psalm by heart before he was five years old, I suspected.

"Give him to me," I suggested, but Jack had settled, looking up at his father with bright blue eyes, watching his lips as he sang.

"You need to get dressed," Jasper said, breaking off the song. "The carriage will be here very soon. Don't worry about Jack; he's happy enough for now."

And he was. As was I. And Jasper. All three of us, happy enough, at last.


End file.
